Brewer schools Superintendent Cheri Towle is leaving the city’s schools at the end of this month to assume leadership of schools in the Hallowell area.
Towle has been superintendent of Brewer schools for four years, and she had another five years on her contract when she made the decision to resign.
She announced her resignation in a statement published on the Brewer School Department website on Friday.
The end date on her contract will be mutually dismissed under an agreement with the city’s school committee, Towle said. This means the school district will not owe her any money.
Towle lives in Newcastle, and said she’s looking forward to moving closer to home. She also said she’s excited to go to a district which “aligns with all my beliefs educationally.”
Towle is a proponent of proficiency-based education and proficiency-based diplomas, under which students have to show they’ve mastered the state’s various academic expectations in the required subject areas in order to graduate. Even after state lawmakers eliminated the statewide requirement for proficiency-based diplomas, Brewer schools retained more proficiency-based elements in their teaching and student transcripts than most neighboring school districts.
Regional School Unit 2 — which covers Hallowell, Farmingdale, Dresden, Richmond and Monmouth and enrolls nearly 2,100 students to Brewer’s nearly 1,700 — was among the first districts in Maine to embrace proficiency-based learning.
The city’s school committee has started looking for a replacement, Towle said. Chair Kevin Forrest did not immediately respond to questions about the search process for a new superintendent.
In her statement on the school department’s website, Towle said she’s “looking forward to the next steps in my career and being closer to my family.”
“Brewer has accomplished a great deal in the last four years focusing on our children and providing them opportunities to demonstrate their learning in multiple ways,” she wrote.