Beth Doyle takes helm of Greenport schools as superintendent

Sometimes all you need is a sign. It might be a bird landing on your window sill. Could be the random sighting of a lucky number. For Beth Doyle, the sign was staring at her on a New York City subway on her way to work years ago.

A new beginning

While working in the private wealth division with Citigroup Private Bank and Chase Bank from 1996 through 2003, Ms. Doyle began to feel unfulfilled by her job.

“I didn’t really feel like I was giving back,” she said noting that her brother works as a special education teacher in New York City, where her best friend is also a teacher. 

“They really loved what they were doing and I was kind of jealous,” Ms. Doyle said. “Like I want to love my job too.”

An ad for the New York City Teaching Fellows Program was posted opposite her in the subway car — the perfect opportunity for her to become a certified teacher after six weeks of summer school. 

As a child, Ms. Doyle expressed interest in becoming a teacher, but instead, at her father’s direction, pursued a career in finance for a more lucrative salary. 

“[My father’s] orientation was always about money because we didn’t have a lot of money,” she said. “So that’s kind of what steered me into the business world.”

From day one, Ms. Doyle fell in love with teaching. Her first jobs were instructing fourth- and fifth-grade students in Springfield Gardens, Queens. 

“I felt like that’s where I was supposed to be,” she said. 

Fast forward/present day

The former finance executive turned teacher, then school administrator, offers a breadth of knowledge on both business maneuvers and education initiatives in her new role as Greenport’s superintendent of schools. 

Since she took the helm as superintendent March 5, Ms. Doyle has worked hand in hand with assistant superintendent Ryan Case — familiarizing herself with the district’s needs and community at large on what she calls a “listening tour.” 

Her goal for the remainder of the academic year is to gather input from community stakeholders to ensure that she hears out their ideas and gathers input on some of her own to see what might work.

A notion Ms. Doyle preaches as a superintendent is the “broken windows” theory. The theory is that “if a window is broken and we’re not fixing it, it sends the message that it’s not important. And kids internalize that.”

This idea translates to the overall maintenance of facilities, something that Ms. Doyle worked to address as director of instructional support with the nonprofit school support organization Replications Inc. from 2008 to 2009.

“[We were] really ensuring the facilities were up to par so kids felt like it was the same school but we were expecting something different,” she explained. 

One glaring problem at Greenport High School is the aesthetics of the bleachers at the football field, Ms. Doyle feels. 

“Our kids deserve to have facilities that represent Porter pride,” she said.

The new superintendent has also been hearing from teachers and school leadership about reading and writing programs. She also hopes to work on the overall school culture, which she said the district has existing elements of. 

“I really want to make sure that I’m hearing from all of the stakeholders, [including the kids], staff, families and community,” Ms. Doyle said.

Greenport schools’ leading pair

Mr. Case stepped up to serve as interim superintendent for eight months after former Greenport superintendent Marlon Small left July 1 to accept an equivalent position with the Elmont Union Free School District. 

“We were dealing with the bond and we were dealing with a lot of things that I learned a lot about [that] I hadn’t really been involved in up until then,” he said of the interim superintendent experience. “So it kind of opened my eyes to [those things].”

He described his working relationship so far with Ms. Doyle as a positive one, adding that he now elects to spend his lunch hour at the Front Street school.

“To Beth’s credit, I have not been sidelined since she started,” Mr. Case said. 

Ms. Doyle credited Mr. Case with her smooth transition into the district. She commended him for his institutional knowledge of the district, its students and general ins-and-outs of Greenport, calling him a “jack of all trades.”

When Mr. Case took over as interim superintendent, he described school morale as “in a rut.” This was something he focused on as the de facto leader of the district until Ms. Doyle’s arrival.

“I think I helped bring everybody to a good spot,” he said. “At least equilibrium, so that now we can build on that.”

With the addition of Ms. Doyle’s leadership, Mr. Case said he feels the district is moving forward “in a positive way.”