Monadnock Ledger-Transcript – Highbridge Hill Elementary School says goodbye to Principal Marion Saari

The sound of approximately 500 elementary schoolers cheering and blowing bash noisemakers stuffed the air lately at Highbridge Hill Elementary University in New Ipswich. The source of the celebration was a ceremony for Principal Marion Saari, who is retiring at the stop of this 12 months just after 42 several years in the Mascenic Regional School District.

The staff members and pupils of Highbridge devoted a storybook walk to Saari, motivated by her passion for reserve walks at the faculty. The PTA gifted her a tree to be planted on university grounds in purchase to symbolize how Saari will go on to assistance the college develop, even when she’s no extended there.

As Saari was escorted to the ceremony by Highbridge’s mascot, a large husky named Harmony, a lot of instructors and personnel wiped away tears, and learners started chanting, “Mrs. Saari, we will miss out on you, you will often have a property here!”

Assistant Principal Lisa Wilkinson gave a transient speech when Saari arrived. She reported that although Saari may have chosen to depart humbly and without any events in her honor, the workers imagined that she was as well crucial to allow that take place.

“Highbridge Hill Elementary is really the home the Mrs. Saari constructed,” Wilkinson claimed as she held again tears.

Saari explained it was adore for the people today and for the neighborhood that stored her functioning in schools for so extended. 

“I stay in this community, I grew up in Greenville, so these are my persons,” she explained.

Saari begun as a paraprofessional in elementary universities, then grew to become a trainer. She later grew to become the principal of the a few elementary schools that served New Ipswich and Greenville, just before the universities blended to develop into Highbridge in 2011. Saari has been the principal of Highbridge due to the fact its opening.

“We all came collectively as just one,” Saari reported.

Many individuals in the group had Saari as both their principal or their children’s principal, and echoed the praise for her.

“My children’s elementary faculty yrs were the most effective of their college experience since of her,” mentioned Sharon Tucker, a speech assistant at Highbridge Elementary. She went on to demonstrate that her daughter, who had Saari as principal, recently graduated college and is hunting for a situation as an elementary university teacher.

“She suggests it is really hard to come by this kind of environment,” Tucker claimed.

Darlene Wilkins, a tutor at Highbridge Elementary whose 4 young children have been some of Saari’s initially learners at Highbridge, shared a similar sentiment.

“This college is anything she envisioned and much more,” Tucker mentioned.

Wilkins shut her speech by noting that Saari prioritized college students in a way that other educators should really try to do. 

“You definitely lived each individual working day your mantra: ‘Is this what’s ideal for young children?’” Wilkins explained. “That basic line informed almost everything you did and each individual decision you created.”