Tupper Lake’s new superintendent of schools hit the ground running in August

by Dan McClelland

Since her arrival here on July 23 the Tupper Lake Central School District’s new superintendent of schools, Jaycee Welsh, has been very busy- meeting the district’s employees and many in the community, and learning everything she can about the particular workings of this school district. She has also helped polish several policies including the student code of conduct, a district safety plan and in recent weeks elementary school and district-wide “comprehensive education improvement plans.”

Mrs. Welsh was named to succeed retiring Superintendent of Schools Russ Bartlett in July after emerging as the top candidate in a superintendent’s search this spring, conducted by Dale Breault, superintendent of Franklin-Essex-Hamilton BOCES.

In an interview in recent weeks in her office at L.P. Quinn School’s administrative wing, she said she is already enjoying the Tupper Lake community and the folks she has met so far.

She was at this past month’s village board meeting and was the guest of honor on a recent Thursday afternoon at a meet and greet held to introduce her to the community at the Tupper Lake Public Library. That morning she also attended the village’s official ribbon-cutting of the new dock system on Raquette Pond. She has already participated at two school board meetings in August and was in full swing at Monday’s September meeting.

She also attended, in the company of Chris Savage, the new middle/high school principal, the Northern Forest Center’s ground-breaking of its new apartment project on Park Street in August.

Tupper Lake’s new top school administrator’s was the LaFargeville School District’s executive principal in recent years.

The 44 year old is married and has been for the past nine years to Kevin Welsh, another educator who is currently the director of data and technology at Brasher Falls school district- the head IT guy there.

Kevin, a widower when he met Jaycee, taught special education in the past and before going into education he worked in the hospitality industry at the Bonnie Castle Resort in Alexandria Bay, working in its various recreational programs.

The Welsh family are long-time Alexandria Bay people.

Jaycee is mother to two adult step children.

She began her post-secondary education in the pursuit of the study of law. “I wanted to be a lawyer. My parents were both teachers, as were my grandparents.”

She grew up in Camden, N.Y., one of three children in their family. She noted her family kn ew the family of Dan Christmas, who has been active in real estate since his arrival in Tupper Lake in the early 1980s.

She described her hometown as quite close-knit when she was growing up there, but like Malone it has seen growth and commercial sprawl on its outskirts in recent years. Camden sported three elementary schools when she was growing up there.

Jaycee attended James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia where she studied pre-law courses of political science and criminal justice.

“I loved the study of politics and I loved the law. But in the course of my studies I soon learned I probably didn’t have the ruthlessness needed to be a good criminal lawyer. I would have been the legal aid attorney who brought all the kids home with me!”

“There were two moments I had when I realized I didn’t want to pursue a career in law. One of my classes was graded on a curve. This was before computers. There were about 15 in the class and the professor said the bottom third will fail the class.

“On the bulletin board outside the classroom he would post the answers to tests. Students rushed there and they were stealing the answers because they wanted an edge. The course was very competitive. I graduated third in my high school class and I was doing fine at university...I’m a hard worker... but all of a sudden I realized I didn’t want to be in a profession that competitive.

“That was the first time I felt that.” She said in the summer between her sophomore and junior years she attended Northwestern Law Institute in Chicago for a week to feel out the law. They put you with third year law students to help you decide if you really wanted to go to law school. All of my fears were affirmed after that week. I realized I could love something, but I didn’t have to make it my career!”

At James Madison she was working in one of the dining services on campus and really enjoyed that, she said. Eventually she became a student manager. She then applied to be the student manager over all of the company’s 14 dining operations on campus and landed the job.

With that much bigger job came a company offer to pay for her to take a human resources degree, if I would stay on with the company after graduation.

“At that point I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do so I said ‘sure, let’s try this!’”

“There were many parts of the job I loved, but I soon learned I was overseeing a lot of customer-service training. -And I loved the teaching part of that job!”

“A lot of the focus of that job was on employee training, and I really liked that!”

“As much as I was enjoying it, I knew the position wasn’t a forever one for me!”

She said she spent many weeks thinking about all the things she liked to do, admitting she likes to do a lot of things.

“I thought back to my senior year in high when I was ahead in my credits and had some free time so I was permitted to go to a nearby elementary school for part of the day and spend it in a classroom, working with the students there, some with disabilities.”

“So I thought that maybe this teaching gene in me that I had been fighting” I needed to follow. She said she began taking education classes at night, working in her human resources position with the dining company during the day.

“I completed my special education master’s degree in a year and one half. At that time there was a huge teacher shortage, especially in special ed. I didn’t do student teaching, because I was hired right away by a school district and did my student teaching in my own classroom.”

She later completed her master’s degree and decided it was time to come home to New York.

Jaycee landed her first teaching job in New York at Carthage. Her music teacher at Camden High was a principal in Carthage at the time and she knew of some pending openings, and told her about them. She was hired there first to teach summer school. At the time she was also working to complete the numerous certifications required by the New York State Department of Education.

She taught for three years in the Carthage school system.

“At the board meeting in Carthage where I was granted tenure, I also resigned to take a position at Lafargeville as both elementary school principal and director of special education in the district.” That was 2015.

Seven years later the high school principal, who started with the district there the same year as Jaycee did, left for another position “and our superintendent knew I was ready for the next thing in my career.”

At that point she was promoted to the position of executive principal at LaFargeville Central.

While she continued as director of special education, she began doing curriculum instruction in grades K to 12, helping with personnel, working alongside a new K-12 principal who oversaw athletics and student discipline.

She was executive principal at LaFargeville before coming here.

“I’m always looking for a challenge. When my husband and I sat down two years ago to talk about what was next for me, we talked about the different districts that we would be interested in moving to. We decided if we were going to be moving a significant distance from our house in LaFargeville, we wanted to make sure we were going in the same direction. Kevin is commuting an hour and a half from LaFargeville to Brasher Falls district, leaving home at 5a.m. every day for school.

Kevin also referees high school football and hockey. The Tupper Lake football team is scheduled to play the Vikings of Thousand Islands later this fall, but he won’t be able to officiate that game because of the conflict of interest.

“I wasn’t interested in applying to be a superintendent of schools for the first time just anywhere. There have been opportunities in recent years. I wanted my first job to be the right fit for me!”

“I’ve been eligible to be a superintendent for years, but I wanted to be in the right place!”

She noted too her LaFargeville superintendent wasn’t going to retire any time soon, because of his relatively young age.

Outside of school Jaycee has logged extensive community service with the Cornell Cooperative Extension board and with the board of Watertown’s Victims’ Assistance organization. She was also a member of several golf leagues. She admits she has golfed since she was a toddler, but is still not as good as her mother, an avid golfer and retired physical education teacher. Her mom golfs in three or four leagues each week.

Jaycee laughs when she said her mom came here earlier this summer two days after she got the job to do some reconnaissance of Tupper Lake and found her an apartment. “But right after that her next stop was to check out the Tupper Lake Golf Course.

Jaycee won’t be on local 18 much for now, unless playing a round or two with her mom this fall. For right now, she has dispensed with her outside interests to devote her full attention to her new job.

One of the reasons that Tupper Lake appealed to her is that in at least one respect it is similar to LaFargeville. That community is one of three along with the more prominent and affluent Clayton and Alexandria Bay that are called “the river communities.”

“-And Tupper Lake, like LaFargeville, has a vastly different dynamic in those river communities, much like Tupper does in the tri-lakes villages.

“That’s what really drew me to Tupper Lake.”

She noted that LaFargeville is largely a farming community, a working community. It’s that same working class background that attracted her here.

“I can identify with that! I felt that Tupper Lake was the right fit for me from the start!”

“When I first saw the job posting (in the statewide education newsletter), I immediately felt that. She said she sometimes possesses strong gut instincts that have always sent her in the right direction. “I thought to myself: I cannot not put my name in for that job!”

-And that brought her to Tupper Lake!