New Interim Superintendent 'Excited' for Move to Chatham

As , the incoming interim chief of schools, Dennis Fyffe, is scheduled to make an appearance in the district soon.

"I want to visit all the schools, meet all the principals," Fyffe said. He also plans to attend the Board of Education meeting on May 23, including the public hearing on the proposed parking lot expansion at Chatham High School scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m.

Fyffe, 64, comes to Chatham after two years as interim superintendent in Stanhope. During the 2009-10 academic year, Stanhope shared his services with Netcong.

"It's tough doing two districts, even if they are small," he said. "You have two sets of board meetings and committees, two sets of issues to address, sometimes two mayors and town councils."

Successful Experiences

After that year, the Stanhope and Netcong boards of education agreed to hire their own interim superintendents. The Stanhope board asked Fyffe to stay on full time, and they were the third consecutive board to double Fyffe's stay in their district.

"[That's] one of the things I feel real good about," Fyffe said. "They’ve been successful experiences, and I look [forward to] a successful experience in Chatham."

Before Stanhope, Fyffe worked in Clinton, Westfield and Long Beach Island as an interim superintendent. The majority of his career was spent in Sayreville, where, similar to O'Neill's tenure in Chatham, he served 16 years as a high school principal, assistant superintendent and superintendent.

"I'm used to a K-12 structure, I spent most of my career in a K-12 district," he said.

One of the challenges Fyffe faced in Sayreville, a district with 6,000 students and seven schools, was student overcrowding projected to move through the schools.

"We had K through fourth grade elementary schools, and we saw it coming at that level," he said. "We already had some overcrowding in the middle school, which was fifth through eighth grades."

At the time, Fyffe said the best solution he saw to the problem was to reconfigure the district to have a school for fourth and fifth grades, alleviating the overcrowding at each of the elementary schools and at the middle school.

"It was the most economical solution, and it was overwhelmingly supported in the school budget vote," he said,

"There was a lot of work that went into getting people to think about something that hadn't been done before, but it had to be done," Fyffe said. "We had students eating lunch in hallways and the library because there wasn't enough room in the cafeteria."

The Nature of Interims

Fyffe started his career as a student-teacher in South Brunswick and then as a teacher in a Head Start Day Care program in New Brunswick. After teaching in Millburn, he was hired as an English teacher at South Brunswick High School and in 1974 moved into an administrative position for the district, pursuing grants and operating grant-funded programs. He never worked as a teacher again.

"I loved teaching, I really did love teaching. But I discovered that I could make more happen in an adiminstrative posisiton, and I like the challenge of what that means," Fyffe said.

A casual visitor to the Stanhope district office could almost mistake Fyffe as a teacher by how the students treat him. He tries to be there when they come in from lunch, and he holds up his hand for every kid to give him a high-five as they enter the building and go back to class. 

Fyffe was Stanhope's fifth consecutive interim superintendent, and when he came to the district "there was a tremendous amount that needed to be fixed. I don’t go to Chatham with the same expectations," he said. "Every indication is that this is a district in very good shape."

Fyffe said his job in Chatham will be primarily to "continue to support all the things that are working well." The nature of his role, he said, will be "somewhat different than the nature of a longterm superintendent." Fyffe said.

At the same time, he knows that that "doesn't mean you sit idly by." School districts constantly face a myriad of problems that need solutions and "you can't afford to lose a year" by being passive. "I have never viewed an interim position as a placeholder, and I like to leave a community in better shape than when I got there."

"I don’t go to Chatham with the same expectations," he said. "Every indication is that this is a district in very good shape."

'Anxious to Get Started'

Though he currently lives near Princeton, Fyffe feels he is familiar with Chatham in terms of community type and community expectations. He lived in Summit for seven years while working as an assistant principal at Summit High School.

He also taught in Millburn at the Milton School early in his career, and is familiar with Chatham's reputation for passionate teachers, supportive parents and ambitious students. "Chatham is very attractive because of the quality of its students," Fyffe said. "I'm anxious to get started."

In Chatham, Fyffe said, "I expect to find a well run district with students who for the most part value their eduacational experience and enjoy being there. I expect to find a pretty talented teaching and administrative staff and by all accounts a community which is proud of its schools and willing to support its schools in a variety of ways."