After an eventful four years serving as New Fairfield Public School district’s top leader, Dr. Pat Cosentino will retire at the academic year’s end. Cosentino’s time in New Fairfield has been a tumultuous one—when she joined the district in 2018 no one imagined that the town would be  building two new schools or that a pandemic would grip the world in the years to come. “The pandemic has really accelerated my retirement,” Cosentino said, “I think I probably would have tried to make it another two years…but the pandemic really took a lot out of m e and it was just time.”

Cosentino has spent the last 30 years of her career working as an administrator, following an initial 9 years of teaching elementary school. While her teaching and early administrative years were spent in the New York City area, the last 20 years were spent in Connecticut schools. And, like her time in New Fairfield, Cosentino pointed out the thread of construction projects that she ushered through at each of her previous schools. From 2001 on she has been at schools that had construction projects in process, noting that she was tapped in 2006 for a Bethel High School principal position with the superintendent at the time saying “Listen, we’re trying to get the high school renovated and we need a principal.”

Her experience with construction projects carried through when she moved into a superintendent’s position in Region 12, which includes Washington, Roxbury, and Bridgewater. Cosentino explained that an answer to the declining enrollment in those towns was the building of a massive Agriscience program that attracts students from other districts in the state, one she says that she’s very proud of, “we were able, with a lot of hard work from many, many people, to get the taxpayers to approve the project.” She’s not sad to be leaving New Fairfield before the buildings are finished, believing that her part is done, though she will be excited to attend the future ribbon cutting ceremonies. And, though the CT Office of School Construction Grants and Review is currently mired in scandals, she is confident and grateful that New Fairfield has dotted all of their Is and crossed all of their Ts throughout the process.

Cosentino is hopeful that New Fairfield’s Board of Education (BOE) will choose a new superintendent who “will not come in and make a whole bunch of changes.” She sees it as important “that the person understands that we’ve already done a lot of really great work. And that we’re in the middle of it and that they need to take the ball and carry it.” She pointed out that there are some excellent internal candidates that are likely to apply—many top administra tors in the district have long histories with Cosentino and were hired by her since 2018. Cosentino thinks that the BOE “needs to remember that the superintendent is not a political job. It’s the instructional leader for the district to move the district forward and do what’s best for kids so that they can meet our vision of being prepared for life after New Fairfield schools.”

Overall, Cosentino is excited for New Fairfield’s future, especially after the time and energy that has been spent improving mathematics. She expects “we’re going to see improvements over the next couple of years.” She went on to say New Fairfield has “a wonderful staff, including administrative, teaching, and support staff in the schools, who really need to be respected and be allowed to carry on the work, the important wo rk that we do every day…We have a great focus on high-quality instruction and building relationships in the classrooms and in our schools.”

Travel, theater performances, reading, and art classes are among the many plans that Cosentino will pursue after retirement. She intends to volunteer,  but will also just appreciate the gift of time after a long and busy career. But she’ll look back fondly on all of her years in education, “you really can have a profound impact on children’s lives.”

By Sarah Opdahl