Currents in Education
Honoring Jane Stephenson's 20 years of service
By Jennifer L. Saunders
YORK - With just a few weeks remaining in her tenure as principal of Coastal Ridge Elementary School, Jane Stephenson was honored Monday evening by her current and past students and their parents, as well as York School Department faculty and staff and members of the community.
Stephenson will retire at the end of the current academic year, after 20 years with the York School Department and 16 years as Coastal Ridge's first principal.
On Monday, June 11, a retirement reception for Stephenson was held at the school, and throughout the event, which lasted more than two hours, a steady stream of visitors greeted Stephenson in the Coastal Ridge Café.
Stephenson has been the school's principal since it first opened in 1991, and when she announced her retirement back in February, she was the first to say it was with mixed emotions.
At Monday's event, Stephenson spoke one-on-one with parents, students and staff, sharing memories from the past two decades as well as plans for the future.
And with the birth of her first grandchild just this month and a second expected any day now, Stephenson smiled and admitted that babysitting will be one of the activities she'll be undertaking upon her retirement.
This summer, she said, her hope is to spend time with her husband, who is a retired high school principal, as well as working in the garden at her Kennebunk home and enjoying favorite pastimes such as kayaking and traveling that have taken a backseat to the couple's year-round careers in education.
Stephenson said there is no question of how much she will miss the students and staff at Coastal Ridge, and that she loved the opportunity to visit with students from the past and present at Monday's event.
In May, Sean Murphy was appointed as the new principal of Coastal Ridge Elementary School from a field of 25 candidates. Murphy and his family will arrive in York this summer once he completes his work as assistant principal of Flood Brook Union School in Vermont to become only the second principal in Coastal Ridge Elementary School's history.
