After 69-year career, educator calls it quits

Joyce Vaught retired last week after 69 years as an educator in Arkansas, 23 of which she spent as superintendent of Lakeside School District.
Joyce Vaught retired last week after 69 years as an educator in Arkansas, 23 of which she spent as superintendent of Lakeside School District.

Joyce Vaught's first day as a teacher started in a two-room schoolhouse that has long since vanished.

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Joyce Vaught, who retired last week as Lakeside School District superintendent, began her teaching career in Leemon in 1945.

Freshly certified from the Arkansas State Teachers College -- which is now the University of Central Arkansas -- the 18-year-old Vaught taught grades one through four in one room. Her aunt taught grades five through eight in the other.

The year was 1945, and Vaught "taught all subject matters for all grades, including cursive writing" to about 16 students at the school in Leemon, south of Wheatley.

On Tuesday, the 87-year-old Vaught retired, ending 69 years as an educator in Arkansas, the last 23 of which she spent as the superintendent of the Lakeside School District based in Lake Village.

On a late June day, Vaught glanced around her slowly emptying office. Most of her 69 years worth of photographs, plaques and certificates were already boxed and stored at her Lake Village home. Some books still lined the shelves behind her desk, but the office walls were bare.

"I'm trying to get out of here," Vaught said. "I'm getting rid of it all. All the plaques and everything are stacked up in my garage."

Even though Vaught has packed up her nearly seven decades of educational experience, she leaves behind a legacy untouched by most educators. Thousands of students have learned under her. The Lakeside district is filled with her educational innovations. And hundreds of teachers and administrators view her as their favorite instructor.

Billy Adams, who took over Wednesday as the new Lakeside superintendent, spent the past 23 years as assistant superintendent of the district, which is spread out between Chicot and Ashley counties in the far southeastern corner of the Arkansas Delta. The 59-year-old Adams has worked closely with Vaught through the years, gaining "a wealth of knowledge" from her.

"Vaught is an icon in public education, and even though she has taught me a lot, I am not nearly the school administrator she is," he said. "She has been my mentor, friend, mother and my angel. She will always be a part of my life."

Adams also serves as something of a district historian, quickly rattling off a list of some of the district's many accomplishments under Vaught's leadership, either as superintendent or as an administrator.

In 1970, the district started one of the first kindergarten programs in the state for 5-year-olds. The district began a school-based health clinic in 1979, which reduced the district's teenage pregnancy rate, and initiated an alternative school that same year. In 1980, Lakeside opened a day care for students' children.

A districtwide building program in the mid-1990s replaced school buildings dating back to the 1920s and 1940s. An allergy clinic for students was set up in 2006.

"We did all kinds of programs," Vaught said. "Anything to help our students. If there was a program out there to help the students, we took advantage of it."

JoAnne Bush, who has served as Lake Village mayor since 1991, said it's hard qualifying Vaught's importance to the school district and Lake Village. The two have worked closely over the years, Bush said.

"She certainly ran the school district very professionally and did her very best to be as involved in the community -- and keep the schools involved in the community -- as she could," Bush said.

"We will miss her. She was a tremendous asset to the education system. Not only to the city of Lake Village, but I think statewide. We were most fortunate to have her here in Lake Village."

In 2011, Vaught's dedication to Lakeside students was recognized with the Superintendent of the Year Award from the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators.

"We've had superintendents with longer superintendency tenure, but I don't know if you'll find anybody with a longer educational career," said Richard Abernathy, the executive director of the association, whose members include superintendents and principals.

"We certainly appreciate Vaught and her service to education and the kids in the state of Arkansas."

Vaught is the first to admit she's had help in running the district, from employees and the state, but from outside sources as well.

Teach for America, a national nonprofit organization that puts new college graduates into districts that usually struggle to find qualified personnel, partnered with the district in 2003. Vaught calls Teach for America "a lifesaver" for the tiny Lakeside School District.

For all of Arkansas' improvements in public education Vaught has witnessed -- a "really amazing" change she calls it -- the struggle of rural districts to attract enough quality teachers is one hurdle that still hasn't been overcome.

"We're doing everything we can as a individual district, but it should be a statewide priority to help us get more teachers," she said.

"We really struggle down here to get enough teachers to fill up the classrooms. There have been many years when I didn't know when school started if we were going to have a teacher in every classroom or not. That's stressful. It's hard to attract teachers to the Delta. Northwest Arkansas doesn't have that problem."

Vaught first entered the teaching profession because of that same teacher shortage in the Arkansas Delta, she said.

After graduating from high school in Eudora in 1945, Vaught wasn't really thinking of a career in education. But Leemon, looking to save its small school from consolidation, was searching for a teacher, and Vaught's aunt persuaded her to take the job.

"I thought business was my calling, but I found out it was teaching," Vaught said. "After I taught, I loved it."

Vaught taught in Leemon and then Moro before teaching in Wheatley. She started in Lakeside in 1955 as a fifth-grade teacher.

In 1962, Vaught became the first woman principal at Central Elementary School in Lake Village. In 1965, she became the federal program coordinator for Lakeside and started her administrative career.

At heart, though, she said she remains a fifth-grade teacher -- even as she went back to school, earning her bachelor's and master's degrees, and climbing the administrative ladder.

Over the years, her students have graduated, gotten married, started businesses and sent their own children into the care of Vaught and the Lakeside School District.

"I can go to church, I can go downtown, I can go out to eat and they are all my fifth-grade students," Vaught said. "I had them when they were 10 years old, and we're still on good terms and I see them all the time. We're good friends and will be until I die. They are the people I deal with now on a daily basis."

After so many years in education, Vaught said she didn't retire for any particular reason. When asked, she answers three ways: "I don't know," "It just seemed right," and "I had to quit sometime, I thought."

"I'm going to sit at home and look out at the lake, just like I'm doing here and look at the same scene," said Vaught, who was married for almost 50 years before her husband died about 10 years ago. She has a sister-in-law, a son and two granddaughters in Lake Village.

"One thing, for the past two years, I've not had the health I had all my life. I don't have the strength now at this age that I had 50 years ago. I don't feel like I'm giving 100 percent everyday. If you can't do the job, you need to go home."

Although she has a hard time answering why she chose now to retire, Vaught knows why she gave so many years of her life to education.

"The kids and seeing them learn," she said. "Seeing where they started from and where they got to. It was the kids that kept me in it.

"I've done I guess everything I want to do. It's been 69 years, so I ought to have gotten it done. It's a wonderful career, and I'd do it all over again if I could. Life led me along this way."

She also worked for so long because it seemed like the thing to do, she said.

When Vaught started teaching, there was no teacher retirement. She noticed a lot of older, widowed teachers who still taught because they needed the income. The idea of always working and always having an income stuck with her long after Arkansas started a teacher retirement plan, which Vaught calls "great."

Even in retirement, Vaught said she is going to stay busy. First up, a class on genealogy. She wants to find a place where she can take a short course on it, then turn around and teach it. Yes, more teaching. She wants to do some volunteer work, as well.

She also has a new house to decorate. In January, Vaught's house burned to the ground. It's thought that a faulty heater started the fire. Vaught lost everything.

But just a couple of weeks ago, Vaught moved into a new house, built on the same ground as the old one. She's still got that view of Lake Chicot; she just needs some more water glasses.

"I got nothing now," Vaught said. "A group came from the church the other night, and I didn't have enough glasses to offer them all something to drink. It's sad to lose everything you have, but I've found out you can live without it. Life goes on."

Metro on 07/05/2015

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