Roser eager to reunite Lew-Port’s leaders
District has been riddled with strife
LEWISTON — Christopher Roser is focused on unifying teachers, parents and school board members in the Lewiston-Porter Central School District when he takes its helm in October.
He sees it as a challenge. Roser, now superintendent of
the Avoca Central School District in Steuben County, will soon run a district that has gone without a permanent superintendent for three years and has been overshadowed by bitter strife between several current and past school board members.
The challenge of bringing the district’s leaders together is an aspect of the job that compelled the 56-year-old Binghamton native to submit his resume along with more than a dozen other candidates for Lew-Port superintendent last year.
“Schools that really have a common voice, so to speak — when the students, the teachers, the cafeteria workers, the parents and the Board of Education are saying the same thing — there’s no telling how far you can go, how far you can improve,” Roser told The Buffalo News in a telephone interview. “If you are unified that way, you can do anything. You can go well beyond a high-performing school district.”
School board members last week voted, 6-1, to appoint Roser as superintendent. Roser has agreed
to a three-year contract with a starting salary of $155,000.
He will start in October and will leave a district that is dramatically different from Lewiston- Porter.
Avoca is a small district — roughly 600 students attend kindergarten through 12th grade in one school building; Lewiston-Porter has about 2,430 students in four schools.
The districts’ financial situations are also different. More than half of the students in Avoca receive free or reduced lunches, and 83 percent of its budget comes from state aid, Roser said. About 12 percent of students at Lew-Port are eligible for free or reduced lunches.
“I’d like to think that I can administer in a larger school and that what we do in a high-needs school district can work in a high-performing, low-needs district,” said Roser, who also served as superintendent in Greenwood School District through a merger and as principal at Hornell Junior-Senior High School.
He began his career as a sixth-grade teacher in Greenwood School District in 1975 and later taught junior and high school social studies in the Canisteo district before becoming an administrator.
Roser describes his management style as “straightforward” and said he holds everyone — teachers and students — accountable for his or her actions. He is proud of having expanded technology offerings at Avoca and helping to boost its academic achievement scores.
“The public wants to know that they’re getting a good bang for their dollar,” Roser said. “The easy days are long gone. They’ve been gone for a long time, and you need to perform.”
Avoca Board President Mary Ellen Johnson said Roser helped propel the school to earn a “bronze medal” designation this year by U. S. News and World Report.
“Chris was the catalyst that changed our little school district from a kind of mediocre school in both appearance and academics into a district that was high-achieving, that we could be proud of,” Johnson said. “It’s definitely a joint effort. He just seems to have the knack to get everyone working together to get things done, and there again, the kids are his main concern and his biggest focus.”
The Lew-Port School Board announced Roser’s appointment last week after several months of late-night executive sessions to discuss two finalists. The decision was between Roser and Oren F. Cook, who was superintendent of Marcus Whitman School District until June 30.
Board President Robert Weller said board members made charts that listed each candidates’ qualities to help choose between the two.
“It was hard to distinguish between the two applicants. That took us a long time, because they were both so well qualified, and then it was a lot of discussion to try to eliminate one or the other,” Weller said. “We used a scientific way because we couldn’t really decide.”
Roser’s appointment will end a three-year run with no permanent superintendent. The district has been run by Don W. Rappold, who has been serving as interim superintendent and assistant superintendent for finance, operations and personnel.
Disagreement with members of the Lew-Port School Board led the district’s last permanent superintendent to leave for a better paying job three years ago.
Whitney K. Vantine was at odds with the board’s majority on several issues during the year before he quit to take a position in Long Island and later in the City of Tonawanda. He told students and parents in August 2005 that he decided to leave Lew-Port “because it became apparent my philosophy of education does not jibe with the current management’s.”
Several of the members who served on the board at that time have since left the board, but divisions within the school’s elected leadership continue to linger.
Roser said he is aware of the district’s history but sees it as a way to end a long career in education with a challenge. He intends to continue working until he is 65.
“I guess I’m at a certain age that — and maybe this is why I appeal to the board especially — I have nothing to lose,” Roser said. “I’ve been in education for 34 years. I could walk away tomorrow if I wanted to, so I can really let it out. I can say, ‘let’s go ahead and do these things to improve student achievement.’ ”
