Staff Report
Cathy Knight knew in sixth grade when her teacher said, “you can do anything, be anything you want” that she wanted to be a teacher.
Knight went home and played “school” with her dolls, teaching them lessons she learned in school.
“My sixth-grade teacher used to tell me as long as you’re learning, you’re alive. As soon as you stop learning, you die.” Knight said. “School embodies that thirst for learning…It’s just a matter of igniting that passion for learning.”
Now Knight, 57, is grown up and has students of her own. Knight is the new principal at Reading Elementary School, hoping to ignite that passion in the 60 or so students there.
Knight is the type who listens to children’s books in her car so she can recommend books for her students to read.
“(Learning is) such a doorway to the world,” she said. “I’ve always been a teacher, I’m a teacher at heart.”
Knight worked her way up from community college to the University of Maryland to Johns Hopkins University, as her finances allowed.
Knight is returning to the school she taught fourth and fifth grade at 10 years ago. Knight was a full-time teacher at Reading from 2005-2007. She ran the summer program in 2006. Then left the school in 2007 to become the principal at Albert Bridge School.
Former Principal Zooey Zullo’s resignation was accepted when the school board released her from her contract July 15.
John Fike, a former Reading school board member was “pleasantly surprised” by Knight’s return.
Fike hasn’t spoken to her and wasn’t part of the decision to hire her, but he remembers her being a good teacher.
Knight lives in West Windsor. She was most recently the principal at the Rochester School, a K-12 school, where she spent three years.
“I was driving an hour-and-a-half each way to work,” she said. “Last December on one day it took me three hours. I decided I was tired of the commute.”
She handed in her resignation then.
“I gave my heart and soul and I feel that there’s a lot I could offer here,” she said.
Her commute to work is now 15 minutes.
She’ll be at Reading four days a week—three days as principal overseeing the staff and students and the other day she’ll be the librarian, integrating technology into classroom assignments.
“I’m very techie,” she said.
Attempts to reach Zullo, who was hired in 2014, by phone weren’t successful. Phone calls to the three Reading Elementary school board members also weren’t returned. As a part-time principal, Zullo was paid a salary of $47,393 in the 2014-15 school year, according to the Reading town report. Attempts to obtain salary figures for Knight’s contract were unsuccessful, though the office of the principal budget (which includes an administrative assistant) totals $114,822 with a $49,792 salary for the principal, documents show.
Knight is upgrading the school website and plans to write a weekly blog.
Knight’s focus is on sustainability — in this case, sustainable learning and making sure that children who grow up in Vermont stay in Vermont, or at least are able to come back.
“I’m going to do all I can to sustain the learning,” Knight said.
Knight starts to miss school around this time every year. She kept in touch with her sixth-grade teacher until the teacher died five years ago. The lessons that teacher taught her are still with her.
This article first appeared in the August 25, 2016 edition of the Vermont Standard.