Nauset Superintendent To Retire In June

ORLEANS – Nauset School Superintendent Brooke Clenchy will retire at the end of the current school year.

 Clenchy, who took the superintendent post on an interim basis in April 2021 and was hired to lead the district on a permanent basis the following year, is in the final year of her three-year contract with the school district. She confirmed her plans in an email to The Chronicle Sunday, saying she informed staff and parents of her decision last week.

 “I wanted to signal my intent to retire early to allow Nauset leadership ample time to find a superintendent who will continue moving the district to new levels of excellence, utilizing the district's vision and strategic plan,” she said.

 Clenchy’s retirement will bring to a close a career in education spanning more than 40 years, including more than 20 years as a school superintendent. She formerly led the Ashland, Winchendon and Nashoba school districts in Massachusetts, and also served as school superintendent in Washburn, Maine. Clenchy also was a teacher and administrator in Canada, and worked for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education from 2014 to 2016.

 “I have absolutely, and thoroughly, enjoyed each stage of my career,” she said in her email.

 Judith Schumacher, chair of the Nauset regional school committee, said Clenchy will be “greatly missed,” and credited her efforts to unify the district’s towns and schools.

 “We’re seven separate school buildings,” she said. “But she has made this a unit. She has made this a working unit and made people feel that they were part of Nauset Public Schools.”

 Chris Easley of the regional school committee noted the challenges that came with leading a new school district in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 “It’s thrown a wrench into the standards of what quality education was,” he said. “It’s required a lot of extra work from everyone involved, particularly superintendents. What do we do for this pandemic? You’re kind of in virgin territory.”

 But he said Clenchy “rose to the occasion” and did a “fantastic job” leading the district not just through the pandemic, but through the $169 million campus renovation at Nauset Regional High School, which is 60 percent complete.

 “You try not to be putting out fires,” Easley said. “You’re trying to have a plan and work forward. But with a building project, you often get fires that keep coming at you. This happens, that happens, that happens. It takes an incredible amount of time. So she not only steered a school system into the post-pandemic, but she also steered the largest building project in our towns ever. Period.”

 Schumacher said Clenchy has also excelled at the less visible parts of her job, including instituting systems and policies that have set the Nauset district up for success after her departure.

 “The new superintendent will inherit a tidy house, a well trimmed ship,” she said. “And that allows us to focus on other things.”

 Clenchy called it “an honor and a privilege” to lead the Nauset district for the past three and a half years.

 “Nauset Public Schools is an amazing school district filled with incredible staff and administration,” she said. “The students represent the very best! I am filled with gratitude to have worked with the four communities of Eastham, Wellfleet, Brewster and Orleans — communities who truly value and understand the importance and legacy of education.”

 Looking ahead, Schumacher said an eight-member search committee will be formed later this month to help guide the process of hiring Clenchy’s successor. A search firm also will be hired to assist the committee in identifying a new superintendent, she said.

 Schumacher said the position could be advertised by November in hopes of hiring a new superintendent sometime this spring. She said she would like to see someone come into the role who understands “the tremendous talent and systems” that are currently at work in the Nauset schools, but who also has a vision for how to steer the district into the future.

 “What exactly that means, I don’t know,” she said. “That’s hard to say. I just hope that you know it when you see it.”