Stillwater Area School District Retirees Leave Behind 600 Years of Service

Another school year has come to an end.

Stillwater area schools said good-bye to 26 retirees this year who have provided a combined total of 600 years of service to the students and families the district.

Below is a list of the district's employees who are retiring:

Janet Ames

Years with the district: 14 

Position: Work Coordinator of Special Needs students at Stillwater Area High School. Ames also spent more than 15 years working in the Washington County Workforce Center where she coordinated youth programs.

Greatest accomplishment at SAHS: “Construction of trails, amphitheater and docks in environmental learning center through work at Washington County in collaboration with SAHS.”

She also spearheaded the food and refuse recycling efforts in the cafeteria.

Retirement Plans: To spend a lot of her time working with fiber arts, knitting, nail binding, band weaving, photography, drawing and reading.

Patty Burrows

Years with the district: 22 

Position: Early Childhood Special Education teacher

Burrows has been a faculty representative for ECSE for several years. She also served on the Continuing Education Committee. 

Retirement Plans: After 39 years of teaching, Burrows is looking forward to retirement. She wants to do more traveling with her husband, do more volunteer work in her church and community and generally enjoy life.

Bill Carlson

 Years with the district: 30 

Position: Special Education Teacher with EBD licensure at Stillwater Area High School. staff since 1981. His content area included social studies.

Bill Carlson was particularly interested in the needs of those students with severe behavior needs and was able to de-escalate kids in trouble.

Hobbies: Bill Carlson enjoys fishing and golfing and has been known to play a round or two of golf with other teachers from the high school.

Jeanne Carlson

Years with the district: 35

Positions: Jeanne Carlson's first job was at Lake Elmo Elementary, where she taught first- through third-graders in a cooperative setting for 17 years. While at Lake Elmo Elementary, she also taught second- and fourth-graders. In 1993, she transferred to Lily Lake Elementary to become a full-time Title I teacher (for nine years) and then worked in special education with EBD/LD students for four years. She then returned to the classroom and has since taught second, fourth and fifth grades. 

Retirement Plans: Jeanne Carlson looks forward to spending time with her family and friends and pursuing some new career possibilities.

Doug Chatterton

Years with the district: 38

Position: Groundsperson.

Chatterton has been a mainstay in maintaining the districts grounds and equipment. He was known as the go-to guy to fix or get anything running, as well as making sure the grounds crew always had what they need to get the fields marked or lawns mowed.

Without a doubt, Doug has logged more time on district lawn mowers than anyone.

It is estimated that he has mowed well over 90,000 acres of district properties.

Mary Ebersviller

Years with the district: 10

Position: Special Education and Read With Me Teacher at Withrow Elementary.

Retirement Plans: Home improvements, gardening, volunteer work and being a grandmother.

Wayne Feller

Years with district: 25 (and counting)

Position: Band Director.

Hobbies: With family and friends, Wayne enjoys the wilderness, canoeing, fishing, winemaking and basketball.

Retirement Plans: The ink is not even dry on Feller's retirement letter and he has already begun his new career as a technology integration specialist for District 834.

Cindy Feyma

Years with the district: 13

Position: Fourth grade teacher at Afton-Lakeland Elementary.  

Retirement Plans: Feyma looks forward to spending time with her own children (and possibly grandchildren, soon) and traveling with her husband. Don’t be too surprised if you see her wandering the halls of Afton-Lakeland next year - she plans to volunteer at the school, too.

Marilyn Forseth

Years with the district: 30
Positions: Physical Education Teacher at Oak-Land for one year, 16 years at Lake Elmo and 13 years at Rutherford. She was also the varsity gymnastics coach for 15 years.

Retirement Plans: She is looking forward to being with her grandchild.

Judy Graupner

Years with the district: 33
Position: Graupner has been a teacher in the Stillwater Area Public School District since 1978, spending 26 years teaching first grade at Lake Elmo Elementary.

Most Rewarding Part of Teaching: Seeing firsthand the social and academic growth of her students.

Retirement Plans: She is coming back to Lake Elmo one day a week next year to job share with another teacher.

Dale Johnson

Positions: Johnson has served in many capacities for the district. He started out as a custodian and bus driver at Marine Elementary; then became the second engineer at Stillwater Area High School when it opened in 1993. Most recently, he has served as head groundsperson, overseeing the district’s facilities and grounds.  

Diane Johnson

Years with the district: 18

Position: Health Paraprofessional at Marine Elementary.

Prior to working at Marine Elementary, Johnson worked as an EMT on the Marine Ambulance for 13 years. She was a “Room Mom” at Marine during those years and also served as the school’s secretary for a time.

Retirement Plans: Johnson is looking forward to spending her extra time caring for her flower gardens and hiking in the Minnesota State Parks system. She loves watching the birds and wildlife and will make it her goal to visit each and every one of the parks.

Paulette Jones

 Years with the district: 16

Position:  Jones has been a teacher for Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) working with infants, toddlers, preschoolers and as a parent educator.

Jones' passion was working with the children and families who attended Cimarron Preschool and the Family Learning program, which brought families with young children together to learn English. Jones was also  involved in the district's Home Visiting Program, where she visited family child-care homes on a weekly basis to bring a preschool experience to those children.

Retirement Plans: Jones plans to travel and spend more time with her family next year.

Jody Kenney

Years with the district: 18

Position: Paraprofessional at Lily Lake.

During her years at Lily Lake, Kenney worked in fifth and sixth grade classrooms, the media center, the computer lab, provided tech support for the school, supervised the playground and cafeteria and served as a crossing guard.  She also produced a weekly news show with the students which evolved into a daily news show. Kenney was involved in video and slideshow productions and helped with the yearbook over the years. 

Darlene Kruse

Years with the district: 34

Position: Kruse began her career in school food service in 1977 at Hillside School. When Hillside closed, she moved to Lake Elmo Elementary School where she worked as cook manager until 2003. Kruse has been out on leave for the past several years, and officially retired this year. 

Throughout her employment, Kruse served up more than 2.3 million meals to students at Stillwater Area Public Schools.

Vicki Myatt

Years with the district: Myatt began her career in education in 1973, and in that time has taught in Kentucky, Louisiana and Minnesota. Before coming to Stillwater Junior High School, Vicki worked for three years at Valley Crossing Community School as a full-time Parent Involvement Coordinator. In 1999, Vicki was just beginning her fourth year at Valley Crossing when Rick Wippler hired her to be the Media Specialist at Stillwater Junior High School. Vicki was the media specialist for six years, and has spent the last six years teaching English.

Retirement Plans: Myatt plans to travel across the country to visit her three children and four grandsons ranging in age from 6 years to 2. She also plans to spend time in her garden and sit on her deck to read the pile of books she has accumulated, as well as volunteer, follow her passion of photography and de-clutter her closets.

Jerry Norton:

Norton retired from his position as lead engineer at Lake Elmo Elementary in January. Before becoming the lead engineer at Lake Elmo, he was at Stillwater Area High School where he worked closely with the special education students and their recycling program. Prior to his high school stint, Norton served as a long time second engineer at Oak Park Elementary. 

Michael O’Rourke

Years with the district: 32

Position: O’Rourke has been a social studies teacher and golf coach at Stillwater Area High School since 1979. He was also the psychology club advisor.

Retirement Plans: O’Rourke has a second home in Florida and hopes to enjoy his retirement in the sun.  He enjoys spending time outdoors, biking and playing golf.

Bonnie Parent

Years with the district: 17

Position: For five years, Parent served as a cook at Lily Lake Elementary School, where she was promoted to kitchen manager, a role she worked in until her January 2011 retirement.

She helped make “frog Hall” an inviting, welcoming, fun and colorful place for students to enjoy their meal while surrounded by a peaceful outdoor scene, which she drew and painted on the walls.

She started the first ‘fruit and veggie’ classes at her school, and encouraged many students to try new fresh fruits and vegetables both in her class sessions and at breakfast and lunch.

Dianne Polasik
Position: Nurse in Stillwater Areas Schools’ Early Childhood Special Education program, as well as at Oak Park, Lily Lake, Marine, Withrow and Andersen elementary schools. She became the lead school nurse over 10 years ago.  

Polasik sums up her career in these words:  “There have been fun times, sad times, frustrating  ‘go back and change your game plan’ times and ‘yes we did it’ times.”

Retirement Plans: Polasik and her husband have lived in Stillwater on a small tree farm for the past 25 years. Their retirement plans include lots of outdoor work on the farm and much more travel.  

Nancy Rudesill

Years with the district: 23

Position: The Speech Language Pathologist at Afton-Lakeland Elementary School. 

Roxie Schwanz

Years with the district: 28

Position: Physical Education teacher at Oak-Land Junior High. She also spent time at Marine Elementary, Stillwater Junior High and Forest Hills Magnet School.

Hobbies: Reading, volunteering in her community and keeping up with the activities of her four children.

Retirement Plans: Schwanz plans to continue her volunteer work at a local hospital and in her in church and perhaps work part time at a fitness center. She also plans on traveling with family and friends.

Kim Swanson

Years with the district: 18

Position: Swanson has been serving as a paraprofessional since 1993. 

Through her work Swanson dedicated countless volunteer hours toward improving the overall quality and standard of work done by paraprofessionals at Rutherford and throughout the district.

Joy Thole

Years with the district: 18

Position: Thole served as secretary at Oak Park Elementary School. She joined the Oak Park staff in 1993 as a building secretary and was promoted to the principal’s secretary in 1998. She served under three administrators, and was valued for her positive personal demeanor, organizational skills and her ability to maintain calmness at all times.

Retirement Plans: Thole is looking forward to spending time with her family upon retirement and is anxious to devote more time to reading, relaxing and spending time at the lake. 

Denise Turner

Years with the district: 30

Position: Turner was a paraprofessional at Lake Elmo Elementary School.  She began her career of supporting, motivating and helping students learn and grow in 1980. 

Favorite part about working at Lake Elmo? Her joy came from working with students and staff. Some of her favorite things were working on the Talent Show with Paula Verstegen, going on field trips with Garnett Roofe, making covered wagons with Cary Bolstorff, working with reading groups in Beth Payne's classroom, and working in Kindergarten with Myrna Renslo. 

Retirement Plans: She is looking forward to traveling to other states to visit her children and grandchildren, as well as spending the summer with her newly adopted Corgi. She plans on returning to Lake Elmo Elementary next year as a Big Brother/Big Sister volunteer.

Leigh Wight

Years with the district: 37

Position: Wight began teaching in the Stillwater Area Public Schools in the fall of 1974 where she taught first grade at Bayport Elementary School (now known as Andersen Elementary). She has taught first and second grade at Andersen ever since.  In fact, she has been teaching in the same classroom for the last 37 years. 

“One neat thing about working in the same building for so many years is being able to teach several generations of the same family in my class,” Wight said.

Retirement Plans: Wight plans to travel the country looking for a new home to live in during the winter months. She also plans to babysit her great niece, read and relax.