By Mike Donoghue

Superintendent Michael J. Clark, who has overseen schools in Grand Isle County since 2018, has been named the new superintendent for the Orange Southwest School District in Randolph.

The district offered Clark a two-year contract with an annual salary of $155,000 and benefits in the first year.  The second year will provide for both merit and cost-of-living raises.  The contract has an automatic rollover clause.

He was one of 10 candidates for the district post, which covers the Central Vermont towns of Randolph, Braintree and Brookfield.  He will oversee three elementary schools and a combined junior-senior high.

Clark will be the permanent replacement for Superintendent Layne Millington, who stepped down after a few rocky incidents in recent years.

The Randolph candidate list was whittled by a screening committee to two finalists: Clark and High School Co-Principal Lisa Floyd of Bethel.

Clark was the unanimous choice by the board.

Hannah Arias, the OSSD School Board chair, did not respond to emails seeking comments this week.

Clark had indicated last August that he would not seek to have his contract renewed and would be seeking a new job.

For Clark and his wife, the new job will be a chance to return to their roots.  Clark’s wife is a Randolph native, and he is from Barre, about 15 miles up Interstate 89.

Clark said his family plans to sell its current home in Sheldon.

“I am excited about joining Orange Southwest and I will miss the great friendships and relationships that have been built in the Champlain Islands,” Clark said.

He has weathered a few rough storms in the islands, the biggest being a no-confidence vote by the former Alburgh School Board last year.  Residents have since provided no confidence votes in the former board.

Two school board members, including the longtime chair, were both defeated by 2-1 margins on Town Meeting Day.  The $8.9 million school budget proposed by the former School Board also was overwhelmingly rejected.  After the defeat of two board members, two other School Board members, including the vice chair, quit last month, hours before the annual reorganizational meeting.

The three remaining Alburgh board members are seeking local residents to fill the two vacant seats and to move forward. 

Clark will be replaced in the Champlain Islands by Lisa Carla Ruud, who has been the director of academics at the Chatham (N.Y.) Central School District since 2020.

Ruud and the GISU board and Ruud agreed to a 3-year contract with her getting paid $142,000 for the coming school year and $149,000 in the second year.  The salary for any subsequent years will be negotiated. 

Clark has been working on the Grand Isle transition with Ruud, who begins serving the five towns on July 1.  She has extensive experience as an educator, leader and in research positions.

Meanwhile Clark is trying to get up to speed in Orange Southwest.

When Millington resigned, he told the White River Valley Herald in Randolph that he had become somewhat frustrated, including with the lack of local support shown for him in a transgender case in October 2022 that received national attention.

A 14-year-old girl on the Randolph varsity volleyball team said she became upset when a teammate born as a biological male, but claiming to be a female, came into the girls locker room and watched the teens changing clothes, court records show.

Millington, school officials and the district, disciplined the complaining girl and fired her father as the middle school girls head soccer coach.  The father and daughter eventually sued Millington and others in federal court.  The family settled out of court for $125,000 in May 2023 and the district agreed to restore the father as a coach and to remove any reference to the incident from his record and his daughter’s school record, court records show.

Now Millington is headed to be superintendent at the Two Rivers Supervisory Union in Chester.  The board voted 4-2 to appoint Millington to replace Lauren Fierman, who resigned in protest when the School Board agreed to keep the high school’s longstanding mascot, the Chieftains. 

Clark has broad experience in Vermont as a teacher, principal and superintendent. 

The Grand Isle Supervisory Union Board initially hired Clark in July 2018 for 90 days to serve as acting superintendent following a resignation.  

The district soon offered him the post of Interim Superintendent and by November 2018, Clark had secured a three-year extension.

He came to the Islands after working for the previous three years in the Northeast Kingdom as the Superintendent for the Essex Caledonia Supervisory Union. There, he closed operations for the ECSU after successfully merging with three other Supervisory Unions, fulfilling the best outcome for his towns. 

Prior to his work in the Northeast Kingdom, Clark was the high school principal at BFA-Fairfax for six years. He also worked at Colchester High School for 10 years in a variety of roles including science teacher, director of student services, and assistant principal for student management.