AMHS Principal to Step Down at End of School Year

Tim Stewart, principal of Arlington Memorial High School

Andrew McKeever

GNAT-TV News Project

ARLINGTON — The principal of Arlington Memorial High School has announced his decision to step down from that position in order to return to the classroom.

Tim Stewart, who has served as the school’s principal for the past three years, made the announcement during Wednesday’s school board meeting. He will remain as principal for the remainder of the school year, and his resignation from that post will become effective after that.

“Tim stepped in three years ago and did a fine job when they  needed him,” said William Bazyk, the school superintendent of the Battenkill Valley Supervisory Union (BVSU), which includes the school districts of Arlington and Sandgate. “He will be missed as a leader of the school.”

In his resignation letter, Stewart said he hoped to resume direct involvement with a vocational program known as Room 129 Productions, a furniture  and small engine repair  which he created in 2007, and was run by high school students.

“From now until graduation, I will work with you all to ensure we are meeting the needs of our students,” Stewart stated in his resignation letter. “I look forward to resuming the Room 129 Productions program to help reach the vocational needs of students as part of Act 77, and am happy to begin this next phase of my education journey.”

Act 77 is a  statute passed in 2013 by the state legislature which created a concept referred to as “flexible pathways to education” and is described by the state’s Agency of Education as “any combination of high-quality academic and experiential components leading to secondary school completion and postsecondary readiness,which may include assessments that allow the student to apply his or her knowledge and skills to tasks that are of interest to that student.”

The statute is being drawn upon by the school district’s Act 46 study group and the school board as a pathway to the district meeting the requirement s of Act 46, the state’s school district consolidation law. Arlington has been unable to forge a merger or consolidation with neighboring school districts or supervisory unions and in its mandated report to the education agency leaned heavily on Act 77 as a rationale for keeping the district and supervisory union more or less as is

Stewart’s Room 129 Productions was described in the school board’s announcement as an alternative education program which  offered students academic credit in English, math and science as they learned how to manage and market a small business in a hands-on setting, according to the statement from the BVSU’s board of trustees.

The board’s statement added that Stewart “remains committed to being a integral part of the AMHS community and we look forward in supporting him in that next step.”

Stewart first joined the district as a classroom teacher in 1987. At the request of his predecessor as principal, Kerry Csizmesia, he stepped away from full-time classroom teaching seven years ago to assist Csizmesia as athletic director, before taking over the reins as principal four years later when Csizmesia left that post. He followed in the footsteps of his father, Dick Stewart, who also served as a principal of Arlington Memorial High School and later as superintendent of the BVSU.

The school board said they accepted his resignation with regret and thanked him for his leadership and dedication to the school district.