Trio of teachers honored for 25 years of service as RCS prepares for start of new school year

Three RCS teachers were recognized by the Board of Education on Wednesday for 25 years of service to the school district.

During a Welcome to the School Year meeting, Superintendent Vicki Wright and Board of Education President Mike Varney presented Bruce Stott, Andrew Papas and Joyce Bouyea with certificates recognizing their long service to the RCS community.

Papas is a technology teacher in the middle school while Stott is a social studies teacher in the high school. Bouyea is a second grade teacher at Pieter B. Coeymans Elementary School.

"This level of dedication and service is quickly becoming a rarity. Increasingly, studies show that the average person will have seven or eight jobs during their career," noted Ms. Wright.

The honors followed a breakfast paid for and provided by district administrators.

After honoring the veteran teachers, Superintendent Wright welcomed the more than 300 professional staff in the district to  the start of 2007-08 school year.

In a brief speech that highlighted the changes RCS encountered and continues to address,  Wright said "Last year, we were challenged by the comptroller's audit, the independent audit and all that we then had to change in order to design and implement a new way to do business."

"Each of us felt the burden of the new controls, the new policies that have to be or already have been put into place and the new processes that had worked in the past, but are no longer cogent and applicable in this new era of tightened and heightened fiscal accountabilities. With all that, we still had to worry about state assessments, school accountabilities.... and all that goes along with this monument change in process."

"Well, we have persevered in the face of change; we have made effective strides in meeting  the challenges of teaching, coaching, advising, counseling, providing necessary services and assisting our students to become ready for jobs that have not even been developed yet," said Wright.

Students report for their first day of school on Thursday.