Wescott calls it a career

Greg Wescott

District administrator reminisces about his lifelong vocation and his 16 years in Elkhorn

By John Koski

Staff Writer 

Greg Wescott sat at the conference table in his office in the historic 1887 building Thursday morning. His personal belongings had already been removed. The walls were mostly bare and the bookcases half full. The top of his desk had only handful of papers on it.

After 16 years as district administrator of the Elkhorn Area School District, retirement was just a few days away.

As we talked, Wescott reminisced about his nearly 40 years in education, a journey that culminated in Elkhorn, a district he regards as the best he has ever worked in.

“Every school district I’ve worked in cares about its schools,” he said, “but I’ve never worked in a school district that cares more about its schools than this one – in unbelievable ways.”

Early years

Wescott’s studies in the field of education began a few months after he was part of the first graduating class of Madison Memorial High School in 1969.

“That fall, I attended UW-Stevens Point, which in those days was known as Wisconsin State University at Stevens Point,” Wescott recalled.

“Although I had also been accepted at UW-Madison, my Dad said to me, ‘If you’re going to go to UW-Madison, why don’t you live at home and save money?’ Well, it sounded a lot like high school to me, so I left and went to UW-Stevens Point, primarily just to get out of the house and grow up.

“I graduated in 1973 with a Bachelor of Science degree in social studies and secondary education – back in the days when you could go through college in four years.

“My first teaching position was in Amherst,” Wescott said. “There were 180 students in the high school and I was the social studies department.”

After spending three years in Amherst, Wescott accepted a social studies teaching position at Beloit Turner High School, where he also spent three years.

A slight career shift

From there, Wescott went to Monroe to be an assistant high school principal.

“There were a couple of reasons I decided to become an administrator,” Wescott said.

The first was family related.

“My wife was working at Outboard Marine Corp. in Beloit putting little pieces of felt through a hole and they came out encased in plastic, and she was making $35,000 a year. I was making $13,000 as a social studies teacher and coach.

“(My wife) Mary came home one day and we talked about having a family and it was important to both of us that she stay home with the children.”

Because his wife would be giving up the higher-paying job, the couple wondered how they were going to achieve their goal.

“About the only way you could get a pay increase (as an educator) in those years was to go into administration,” Wescott recalled.

“But probably the biggest reason was that I found myself sitting in the teachers’ lounge listening to other teachers second-guessing the principal and asking, ‘Why are we doing this?’ or ‘Why do we need to do that?’ I didn’t want to be one of those people without at least trying to do the job of a principal.

“Rather than listening to people criticize the principal or even criticize the principal myself, I felt I should try to walk a mile in the shoes of a principal,” Wescott said. “So I decided to do that and was lucky enough to get hired as an assistant principal in Monroe.”

Wescott’s next goal was to become a building principal. After spending four years in Monroe, he found his opportunity and accepted the combined position of middle and high school principal in Mishicot.

“I spent three years there, as the grades 7-12 building principal,” he said. “I learned a lot there about the people part of this business.

“In 1986, my Dad became ill, and he was in Madison. We had two young children at the time and we were driving back and forth to Madison on weekends and it was three-and-a-half hours one way in a car. So we thought we would try to find a way to get a little closer to Madison.”

A position in the Delavan-Darien School District opened in 1986. Westcott applied, interviewed and was hired as the principal of Delavan-Darien High School.

He held the principal’s position for seven years and then became the director of instruction for the school district.

Making the last move

Wescott’s next career stop would prove to be his last.

“I came to Elkhorn to be the district administrator in 1997,” he said. “I wanted to be a superintendent of a school district because there were some things dealing with organization that I wanted to try to see if they would work.

“The next thing you know, 16 years goes by and you’re at the end of a nearly 40-year career in education.

“One of the things I’ve enjoyed about being district administrator in Elkhorn has been the challenge of managing growth,” he said. “We had just over 1,900 students when I came here in 1997 and we now have 3,200 students.

“In managing that growth,” Wescott said, “we wanted to preserve the values of a small town. We wanted to hang on to the characteristics that probably attracted people to come here originally.

“The other thing that I’ve enjoyed is the support this community has for the school district – whether it’s people volunteering or giving gifts, or the scholarship foundation, which is unbelievable for a community this size. It’s exciting to see just how much this community identifies with the school district and supports it.”

Keeping focused

“One of the things that really helped me stay focused on what it is we are doing here is reading to our kindergarten classes,” Wescott said. “It helped me stay connected and focused and to realize that this is always about kids.”

Because the Elkhorn school district has 12 kindergarten classes, Wescott said that getting into each one every month to read was a challenge.

“But I definitely got more out of it than the students did,” he said.

It also provided some unforgettable memories.

“There was one kindergarten boy who would sit next to me every time I came to read and twirl the tassels on my shoes,” Wescott recalled.

“At the end of the school year, the teacher said to her students, ‘This is the last time Mr. Wescott will be reading to you.’ The little boy looked at me and said, ‘I’m going to miss your shoes.’ You tend to remember those things.

“One of the neat things is when you get to the point where the children you read to in kindergarten walk across the stage to receive their high school diplomas and you can still see the kindergarten student in their faces. It always makes me smile.

“It’s also rewarding to watch the children I had read to in kindergarten grow up and see them in middle school and high school as athletes, musicians and actors. It’s nice to see the finished product.”

Helping all to succeed

Wescott also had another passion, one that revolved around helping students who had trouble fitting into a traditional high school environment.

“The Alternative High School at Gateway Technical College has certainly been a love of mine since the day we organized it when I was a principal in Delavan-Darien,” Westcott said.

“We have graduated more than 800 students from that school. They’ve received their diplomas and moved on with the rest of their lives. That’s 800 students who otherwise probably would not have a high school diploma.”

Westcott noted that the Alternative High School is a passion because when he was a high school principal, he saw students not getting their diplomas who were easily capable of doing so.

“For whatever reason something was going on in their lives and they weren’t going along with the structure of a high school – and the structure of a high school isn’t for everybody,” Wescott said.

“We needed to come up with another structure to help those students get over that hurdle and to get their high school diploma.

“As a result,” he said, “we’ve had students who have graduated from the Alternative High School who own their own businesses and have gone on to college and to do other things they would not have been able to do without that high school. The Alternative High School is a great program that we’ve been working with for 25 years.”

A rewarding experience

“Working in Elkhorn has been such a great experience, which a probably why I stayed here for 16 years,” Wescott said.

“One of the things we’ve tried to accomplish – and I think it’s our biggest goal – is to give each student the tools they need to follow their dream, whatever that dream is. We want to know that we’ve given them the necessary tools so that when they leave us they can travel on whatever road they want to take without encountering roadblocks. I think that’s the focus of our school board and the people who work here.

“I have been truly blessed during my 16 years to have had outstanding school boards,” Wescott continued. “We’ve had a lot of people come on and off the school board, but they’ve always done a really nice job of looking forward and finding ways to talk with one another and to listen to one another, even when they don’t agree with one another.

“We started out a long time ago with an old adage – ‘It’s okay to disagree, but it’s not okay to be disagreeable.’

“The school board has really lived that for the 16 years I’ve worked with them,” Wescott said. “They can disagree and at the end of the evening leave and smile and talk with one another. They truly respect each other, and that’s so important.

“I think the school board realized early on during my tenure that nothing good for kids was going to happen in this district unless we could work with one another.

“I’m going to miss working with so many of the people here,” Wescott said. “I think that about 85 percent of the people working in this school district were hired during my 16-year tenure. You get to know them and I will miss them.

“One of things I won’t miss is the responsibility that comes with being a district administrator. There are 3,200 students and 350 employees that are counting on us to make the right decisions, because if we make the wrong decisions, it’s going to impact them. I’m looking forward to handing Jason (Tadlock) the key and saying to him, ‘It’s yours now; you worry about it.’

“It’s been a great place to work, and I wish Jason the best of luck and know that he’s going to enjoy working here just as much as I have.”

Into the future

The Wescotts have sold their home in Elkhorn and are currently building a home in Lake Mills, a community his grandparents had lived in.

Although he is unsure how he will spend his retirement, Wescott said he first plans to take a six-month sabbatical to do some reading, spend time with his new grandson Logan and visit his daughter Erin in Fort Collins, Colo.

“That’s my initial plan,” he said, “and then we’ll see where life leads me. I’ve always been active and involved in the communities we’ve lived in, so I’m sure I’ll find things to do. For right now though I plan to just meander a little bit.”