Janie Jones, a 39-year veteran teacher, retires from NLCS at the end of 2022 school year

Noah Dalton, The Times-Mail
·5 min read
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Janie Jones
Janie Jones

BEDFORD — Over the course of this past school year, 14 teachers, many of whom worked for the district for more than 20 years, retired from their positions within North Lawrence Community Schools.

The names and roles of those retirees are as follows:

  • Janie Jones - Shawswick Reading Specialist - 39 ½ years of service

  • William Deckard - NLCS Instructor - 36 years of service

  • Carrie Holmes - BNL Science Instructor - 33 years of service

  • Frank Wintin - Oolitic Instructor - 33 ½ years of service

  • Cheryl Gross - NLCS SLP - 31 years of service

  • Maria Edwards - BNL Instructor - 30 ½ years of service

  • Leisa Deckard - NLCS Art Instructor - 29 years of service

  • Mark Ryan - NLCS Career Center/PE Instructor - 29 years of service

  • Joseph Voris - BNL Media Teacher - 29 years of service

  • Tim Day - BNL Science Instructor - 28 years of service

  • Becky Muncy - Music Instructor - 26 years of service

  • Arlene Brim - BMS PE/Health Teacher - 19 years of service

  • Michele Farlow - Parkview Inclusion Teacher - 10 years of service

  • Kim Barany - BNL Instructor - 4 years of service

The longest tenured employee to retire from NLCS was Janie Jones, who worked for the district for 39-and-a-half years, last serving as a reading specialist at Shawswick Elementary School.

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Jones graduated from high school in 1975, the same year that former United States President Gerald Ford signed public law 94-142, or the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, which guaranteed a free and appropriate public education for all students with disabilities across the country.

In high school, Jones had been a cadet teacher in a classroom for students with disabilities, a role that she quickly took a liking to.

“I kind of fell in love with that,” she said.

In the fall of that year, she attended the University of Evansville where she took part in a program that allowed her to spend four days per week in area classrooms with special needs students, giving her the opportunity to put what she was learning in the classroom into practice.

After graduating from the university in 1978, she was hired by NLCS as one of the district’s first teachers for students with disabilities.

This path to expanded education for students with disabilities and the opportunity for Jones to work in this role began with the signing of the EHCA in 1975.

“They really already had developed before I even got there, the co-op and so they had seen a need for educating students that in many places, were left uneducated, they were not allowed to come into the schools. They were not allowed to be a part and that's what this public law did. It was a federal law and that opened up saying basically, all students have a right to free appropriate public education so that I think it already started in here locally,” she said.

She said she then worked as an education coordinator for students with severe disabilities for nine years.

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From there, Jones obtained her administration license and moved on to become the principal of Fayetteville Elementary School, a role she held for eight years until becoming NLCS’s Director of Special Education, a role she would hold for nine years before initially retiring in 2016. At the time, Jones had worked for NLCS for 34 years.

At the time, Jones planned to work with her husband, who had also recently retired, on their farm following her career in education.

“I thought OK, ‘I've had a good career. I've had a very challenging, very exciting kind of career. I’ve loved everything I've done. OK, I'm ready to retire,’” she said explaining her thought process at the time.

It was not long before Jones was ready to return to work.

“Within about September of 2016, we were finished and I remember looking at ads thinking ‘OK, what else am I going to do? What else am I going to fill my time with,’” Jones said.

In November of 2016, she returned to NLCS as a substitute teacher in a resource classroom at Stalker Elementary School, filling in while the district attempted to hire a full-time replacement.

Come March of the next year, the position went unfilled and Jones found herself under contract as the full-time replacement with NLCS through 2022, when she retired as a reading specialist at Shawswick Elementary.

Following her retirement, Jones plans to continue working on her farm while engaging with her other hobbies to fill her time and keep her mind sharp.

“Well, I do like to read and we'll take, even though we still have cattle and those kinds of things, we kind of take little trips here and there. And just, you know, whatever I can do to keep my mind strong and going. So not that I have anything in particular in mind, but that's kind of where I plan to kind of keep thinking,” she said.

Jones gave a special thank you to Sari Wood, who previously served as the principal of Parkview Primary School and the assistant director of special education for NLCS. She said Wood was one of her greatest mentors throughout her career.

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“She was always somebody I could go to and say, 'Hey, you know this, let me kind of give you this situation. What do you think? How could we handle this? But she's always great for that,” Jones said. “I think that's probably why I gravitated to her and she was always there and that great example for me to try to follow.”

Noah Dalton is a reporter in Bedford, IN. He can be reached at ndalton@tmnews.com

This article originally appeared on The Times-Mail: Fourteen NLCS teachers retire following end of school year