Mary Beth Iacobelli has submitted her resignation as superintendent of the Norfolk School District, effective June 30. Iacobelli has served the district for 11 years, since 2014.
State statues required each school district to have a superintendent, and the Board of Education will launch a search for a replacement.
It will be the second retirement for the 48-year education veteran, who stepped down as superintendent of the East Haddam public school system in 2014 after 24 years as a teacher, principal, assistant superintendent and superintendent in that town and New Britain.
Iacobelli said after her first retirement she soon found she was not ready for full-time leisure. A resident of Haddam, she applied for part-time superintendent positions in southern Connecticut and, on a whim, in Norfolk. “I never even looked at a map,” she said. “I had no idea where Norfolk was.”
Called to interview, she persuaded her husband to ride along, promising a nice dinner in Litchfield County. “We drove, and drove and drove,” she said.
The long drive did not dissuade her, however, and she ultimately accepted the job. “The people who interviewed me were a lovely group of people,” she said. “I thought I would take the job for a year or two, but I fell in love with the school and the town.”
Iacobelli looks with satisfaction on the changes that have taken place at Botelle under her leadership. “The whole digital landscape has changed now,” she said. “We have state-of-the-art technology and incredible online resources in the school. We even have 3-D digital headsets that the kids can put on and maybe take a walk through a virtual rainforest.”
She said that over the years the school has economized to keep costs under control despite decreasing student enrollments. She noted that in 2008 there were 158 students in the school and 12.8 full-time equivalent employees (FTEs). Now there are 62 students and only 7.8 FTEs.
The school countered the decline by establishing multi-age classrooms that allow students to either revisit lessons from a previous year that they did not fully grasp, or to move forward to an older age group if they are precocious. “The multi-age model gives us options,” she said. “We don’t put the kids in little boxes. It evens things out nicely.”
Looking ahead, she does not envision drastic changes in her own life. A devotee of pickleball and hiking, she anticipates time for her hobbies as well as helping to care for her elderly parents.