NORTHAMPTON — Longtime Jackson Street School Principal Gwen Agna recently announced she will be retiring after next academic year. When she leaves, she will have spent 24 years as the elementary school’s principal and a total of 31 years in the district.
“I can say, without qualification, that it has been the most rewarding, most challenging and the very best job I could ever have dreamed of,” she wrote in a February letter sent to students, families, faculty and staff. “I love this school, I love the children and families and I love you. But I know that it is time.”
She told the Gazette that in the fall she came to the realization she wanted to plan to retire, but wanted to give ample time between her announcement and the retirement date to allow for a smooth transition.
“It took me a long time to come to this because of my feelings of investment in my job and my enjoyment of it as well,” she said.
Agna, 67, started teaching in 1975 and worked in Ohio and Rhode Island before coming to Northampton in 1988 as the district’s early childhood coordinator and later taking on the position of equity coordinator.
In 1993, then-superintendent Bruce Willard asked Agna to be interim principal for several months at Bridge Street School. “I hesitated,” she wrote in her letter, “believing that principals spent their days mending boilers and yelling at kids. Bruce convinced me to try it and I never looked back.” Later in 1996, Agna became principal of Jackson Street School.
Now, Agna has started to prepare the school for her departure. Chip Wood, an education consultant, will help create a record of the school in its current form to inform the principal search and help guide the new leader of the school.
“We will do this so that the next principal will not have to skip a beat in the transition and so that all that is good and true will remain, including Jackson the dog,” she wrote in her letter.
Greta Jochem can be reached at gjochem@gazettenet.com