COLEBROOKDALE — Boyertown Area School District Superintendent MaryBeth Torchia has announced her retirement.
It was made public at the May 14 school board meeting when her retirement was approved by a unanimous vote of the school board. Her last day is Aug. 9. Torchia said she made the full board aware of her intention to retire in a May 10 letter.
That does not leave the board much time to find a replacement before classes begin for the coming school year. No plans were announced at the meeting for how a superintendent search is to be conducted, nor on an interim superintendent to take the reins while that search is undertaken.
Torchia told MediaNews Group that she has recommended the district use the services of the Berks County Intermediate Unit, which has a wealth of experience conducting superintendent searches and will do so at no cost to the district.
“You are about to embark on the most important job you have as a school board — choosing a new superintendent,” former school board member Donna Usavage, told the board at the May 14 meeting. “It is intensive, complex and long and can more than a year,” she said.
Usavage led the board during the lengthy search that resulted in the hiring of Dana Bedden in 2018.
Other former board members including Lisa Hogan and Brandon Foose were on hand May 14 to thank Torchia.
“You came on at a time of difficult challenges and a board with diverse perspectives,” Hogan said. “It’s a great loss and we’ll feel it deeply.”
“I was in board leadership and we were in quite a scramble, but Mrs. Torchia was always a strong, calming presence,” said Foose.
Those three were joined at the May 14 meeting by several current board members thanking Torchia for her service, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I wish her all the best,” said board Vice President Jeffrey Zawada.
Torchia herself pointed to that time — when remote learning was dropped in the lap of every school district in the country, the never-ending fights over masking began and concerns over everything from learning loss to mental health suddenly took center stage — as perhaps her greatest accomplishment in office.
“In a lot of ways, I suppose I really do see that as my shining moment,” Torchia said.
“The public was more divided the longer the pandemic went on, but I always felt supported by the school board and we always tried to make decisions that we believed were in the best interests of the community. It was a challenging time and there are bigger challenges ahead for education,” Torchia said. “And I was starting to feel like I didn’t want to be in charge anymore.”
With political challenges and things like artificial intelligence much closer than the distant horizon, Torchia, who will celebrate her 60th birthday in July, said “I thought maybe its time for someone younger than me, and smarter than me.”
Born, raised, and educated in Reading, the youngest of five children, Torchia said she has lost three older siblings in recent years and had been thinking about retirement for a year or so.
“Life is short and I began to ask myself if I want to be here a few years longer.” Torchia told MediaNews Group. She has just completed the third year of a five-year contract “and I didn’t feel like I could make a whole year longer. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it.”
Torchia was never in doubt that she would make it in terms of achieving her dream of a career in education. With a large family and parents unable to pay her way through college, she had to pay it herself. She graduated from Reading High School in 1982 and it took her 10 years of attending classes when she could to get her degree from Kutztown University.
“I would take time off to work, to earn some money, and then go back to school,” said Torchia, who added that if the photos of her parents at her graduation are any indication, “they were very proud.”
Her first job was working for her alma mater in special education and coaching Reading High School’s first boys’ volleyball team to a county championship the first year the program was certified for PIAA play. She worked there for five years.
For the next 10 years, Torchia worked in special education in the Antietam School District; starting as a teacher and leaving as the assistant to the superintendent in charge of special education.
Torchia decided that to round out her professional profile a bit more, she should be a principal for a time and took a post as principal at Daniel Boone’s Amity Intermediate School from 2008 to 2012. After that, she was recruited again to be assistant superintendent and served for a brief time as Daniel Boone’s superintendent until 2015, when she left to take the director of special education post at Boyertown.
In 2017, when Boyertown Superintendent Richard Faidley resigned for the second time, former Pottstown Superintendent David Krem, now retired, stepped in to serve as Boyertown’s interim superintendent. A mutual friend recommended Torchia to Krem to serve as assistant superintendent and she took the job.
She also served as assistant superintendent to Dana Bedden, who lasted about two years in Boyertown before moving on to Centennial School District in Bucks County in 2020.
The school board made Torchia acting superintendent and five months later, in January, 2021, they made the appointment permanent.
Although Torchia intends to remain active, she also intends to enjoy time fishing “5 to 70 miles out,” out of Delaware’s Indian River inlet, “on weekdays instead of just on weekends, when it always seems to be raining,” she said with a laugh.
As she looks back on her career, Torchia said she looks upon it in its entirety as a blessing.
“I am so happy I was able to use my ability to empower people, to help them find their worth, like I did,” Torchia said. “I feel proud any time someone I’ve taught reaches out to me to tell me I made a difference in their lives.”
Source: Berkshire mont