Superintendent Bezeau announces he is leaving the district in June
Dr. Brad Bezeau, January 2025. Photo courtesy of Darcy Matthies.
by Sara Swanson
Manchester Community School families received a message Friday afternoon with a letter from superintendent Dr. Brad Bezeau letting them know that he will not be requesting an extension of his current contract with the district and that he will be leaving the district on June 30, 2025.
He stated, “After much planning and research since last summer, and at the 32-year mark in my public education journey, I am exploring other opportunities in public education, as well as the private sector. It has been the honor of my life to serve the Manchester Community Schools, and I will take with me friendships and work with students and colleagues that I will never forget.”
Dr. Bezeau committed in the letter to doing everything possible to ensure a smooth transition for the next superintendent and to working with school board president Sandra Wiitala on the search for the next superintendent.
Wiitala stated, “Planning to recruit and hire our next superintendent begins immediately. We will be sharing our next steps and timelines very soon and are grateful to Dr. Bezeau for his professional collaboration and work to ensure a seamless transition for our next leader. We wish him and his family the very best in this next chapter of his career.”
Dr. Bezeau is our longest-serving superintendent since Cherie Vannatter, who held the job for six years. With a start date of June 2020, you can imagine some of the complications he was faced with immediately, but in addition, he was stepping into a leadership vacuum after the district had been headed up by a three-year string of four interim and short-term superintendents. He was interviewed and hired over Zoom to begin a school year in which the student body was split between in-person and virtual. A week into school, he faced down an anti-mask protest and de-escalated the situation that had the potential of ending in violence, then was faced with fallout from national coverage of the incident. He faced staffing problems, lack of subs, and disrespectful students who created a hostile work environment for teachers, a bus driver shortage, the need for him to serve as a building principal, and the on-going decrease in enrollment.
Wiitala acknowledged this in her thank you to Dr. Bezeau, saying, “On behalf of the Manchester Community Schools Board of Education, I would like to sincerely thank Dr. Bezeau for his service to our district and our community while serving as our superintendent. His ability to be flexible and resourceful through some unprecedented challenges in our state has been very much appreciated.”
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