ORLEANS — Nauset Public Schools Supt. Brooke Clenchy has confirmed that her retirement at the end of the current school year, first announced last month in an email to parents and staff, will mark the end of her 40-year career in education. She began as a classroom teacher in Canada and has included more than 20 years as a superintendent in Maine and Massachusetts.
“This has been a calling for me,” she told the Independent. “This is a dedication in your heart that you feel, to make the right decisions for children.”
Clenchy was praised by members of the regional school committee for leading the schools in the wake of the pandemic, streamlining procedures, revamping policies, and uniting the system’s five districts. Nonetheless, major challenges face whoever steps into Nauset’s top job next year.
“I probably will remember her most for bringing together our five districts in a way that I think was never done before,” said regional school committee chair Judith Schumacher of Orleans. Those five districts include just seven schools: five elementary schools administered by local committees in four towns — Brewster, Orleans, Eastham, and Wellfleet — and the middle and high schools governed by the regional committee.
Clenchy, whose salary for the current school year is $212,175, was hired as interim superintendent in July 2021. After a search, she was chosen from among four finalists and given a three-year contract in January 2022.
The toughest issues that will confront the next superintendent include declining school enrollment, staffing and recruitment challenges, increasing budgets, and uncertainty over the future structure of the four towns’ elementary schools.
According to state data, combined student enrollment at Nauset’s middle and high schools dropped by 16 percent in the last four years — from 1,480 students in 2020 to 1,236 in 2024. Statewide public school enrollment has increased slightly each year since 2021.
Schumacher and committee member Chris Easley of Wellfleet attributed the trend in part to the region’s soaring housing costs, which have also made it challenging for the schools to attract and retain employees.
“We need both students and staff,” Schumacher said. “It’s a double challenge.”
Beginning in 2020, the pandemic created a period of unprecedented staff turnover in the Nauset Schools. A total 178 staff members, including 118 instructional staff, left during the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years. The system employs an average of 550 staff each year.
“Anytime you have turnover of that type, it challenges your culture, and it challenges your identity, because you’re losing your historical reference and your historical people,” said Easley.
An increase in the number of students leaving the Nauset system to attend charter schools or take advantage of school choice — which allows students living in one district to attend public schools in other districts — has also been a factor, they said. According to state data, the number of school-choice students opting in to Nauset has dropped from about 290 in 2020 to about 170 in 2024, while the number of students opting out has increased from about 40 in 2020 to about 60 in 2024. That’s a net loss of 140 students.
Because school districts must make tuition payments for students who leave to attend other public or charter schools and receive payments for each student who opts into the district, attracting and retaining more students could provide a much needed financial boost for the Nauset Schools.
In recent years, several of the system’s five districts have seen their annual budgets increase by more than the state mandated maximum of 2.5 percent per year as costs for labor, transportation, and special education continue to rise, prompting the need for town budget overrides to pay for regular operating costs.
Administrators and school committee members are hopeful that the Nauset High School renovation project, which may have deterred students from choosing the school during construction, will ultimately draw more students to the district once the work is complete.
“We have to finish the building project at the high school,” said Schumacher. “We have to make sure we have the strongest and most dynamic administration at both the high school and the middle school, and that we offer the programs that meet today’s needs. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
The high school renovation is scheduled for completion in December 2025. “The energy that has been generated with the partial opening of the new campus is bound to spill over,” Schumacher said. “I think a new person is going to come to a very strong and vibrant district.”
Another looming question for an incoming superintendent could be how to lead the district through a potential reorganization of its elementary schools, Easley said. Although town and school officials have discussed the fact that aging buildings and declining enrollments in each of the four elementary school districts could point to a need for regionalization, no plan or vision currently exists for how this might happen, he said.
“The towns are very protective of their elementary schools, but just look at the per-student cost on them,” said Easley. “There comes a point where the economics makes them very challenging to maintain. I think you can answer this problem by coming up with a greater vision of what education could be out here.”
With these challenges in mind, Easley said the overriding job of the new superintendent will be to cultivate a culture of education that fosters community and includes all students.
A search committee comprising four members of the regional school committee and one member from each of the four town elementary school committees has been tasked with leading the search for Clenchy’s successor. A joint meeting of all five committees aiming to kick off the process and identify a consulting firm to help with the search was scheduled for Oct. 30.