Russ Bartlett (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

TUPPER LAKE — Russ Bartlett, who has led the Tupper Lake Central School District as the superintendent for the past three-and-a-half years, announced his retirement earlier this month.

He will be in the position until the end of the school year, rounding out 30 years of working at TLCSD — a district he had not planned on spending his career at when he arrived three decades ago, but one that won his heart because of the people he worked with.

Bartlett led the district through the coronavirus pandemic with his signature brand of good-natured sarcasm. He grappled with several tough budget years as voters, tired of rising taxes and costs of living, turned out to oppose the school budgets. The district recently got a $20.5 million capital project approved to improve the district’s buildings with major renovations.

He summed up his reason for retiring with an age-old adage.

“Life is too short not to take advantage of things while they’re available,” Bartlett said.

“I thought back on a lot of the people that I’ve worked with over the years. … I have a lot of friends who have come and gone before they had the chance to retire or shortly after retiring,” he added. “They all had plans and things they wanted to do.”

This is his first year of retirement eligibility in terms of age and number of years of service. But he has no plans for what he’ll do in retirement yet.

“My first plan is to not have any plans for a minute,” he said before admitting that probably won’t last too long.

“I’m not a ‘sit still’ kind of guy,” Bartlett added.

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Where the heart is

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Bartlett came to TLCSD in 1994 as a science teacher. He taught five types of science in his first year. Eventually, his role was streamlined down to focusing on chemistry. That’s probably what former students remember him for the most, he said. He also taught some college level courses at the high school.

In 2010 he became the district’s athletic director. Bartlett said that role made him the busiest he’s ever been in his life, but he really liked it, too.

The next year, 2011, brought massive cuts to the district. Bartlett became an assistant principal and dean of students. Then, in 2015, he became the middle-high school principal, and in 2020 he became the superintendent.

He climbed the ladder in the district, taking on more responsibilities and roles. As he did, he kept looking back longingly on where he came from.

“When I think back over 30 years, I don’t know that the last four will stand out as having been a highlight of my time,” Bartlett said.

He’s glad he had the time to do it and work with the people he did, but he missed working with 20 to 30 kids in a classroom all-day, every day.

“I think at heart I’m always going to think of myself as a teacher and a coach,” he said.

“The superintendency has a tendency to separate you from kids, and that’s one of the things that I have not loved about the position,” Bartlett added. “I understand that in the big picture, someone has to take care of all of the things that go on behind the scenes so that the people who do impact kids on an everyday basis can do so.”

He said maybe he’ll eventually do something related to education again in retirement. If he does get back into education, he likes to think it would be in a classroom setting, not an administrative one.

The classroom is where he did his most fulfilling work. But it wasn’t teaching about the periodic table of elements or how to score a goal that brought him joy, it was “helping (students) to recognize stuff inside themselves that they don’t know is there.”

As an adult, he said he sees characteristics they don’t yet, and he tries to bring those characteristics out of them.

“That’s the success in teaching,” Bartlett said.

The superintendent position is “the business side of school that allows teachers and administrators to do what they can do without worrying about how things run,” he said.

The $20.5 million capital project approved by voters last month took a lot of time and effort. He said it does not have as much direct involvement for students as other things he’s done, but the end result will be much safer buildings for them to learn in.

He came into the superintendent role in “interesting” times, in the summer of 2020, right after the coronavirus pandemic sent students home for weeks during the first lockdown.

“There is, I guess, no better crash course for becoming a superintendent than having to completely dismantle the way your school runs and rebuild it from the ground up,” Bartlett said.

But it was a tough time to be a new school leader.

“The first two years I didn’t feel like I had an opportunity to put my fingerprint on anything because everything was dictated to us,” he said.

In the last year-and-a-half he’s focused on trying to identify what “normal” is again and getting kids what they need to be successful.

He said the district came out the other side of COVID-19 having learned a lot about the way school runs. Some changes made in that time stuck around, as they improved the school experience even outside of the pandemic.

The district’s finances are always a concern.

“We’re always asked by the state to do more with less money,” Bartlett said. “As a superintendent, the thing that’s hardest thing for me to get used to is the amount of times you have to say ‘no.’ It doesn’t always feel good.”

But he feels he’s leaving the district in a good position.

He said he’s not the type to give advice but told his successor, if, at the center of every decision they make is a goal to make the educational experience better for students, then it’s not a wrong decision.

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The rest of the year

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The district will be starting its budget process soon. Bartlett said creating the budget, setting the ballot for the school board elections and trying to get the budget passed always makes Dec. 1 through May an “all-out sprint.”

“And then, in June, I plan on just hiding out under my desk and playing Candy Crush,” Bartlett said, showcasing the sarcasm he displays in his interviews with the media, which he uses to temper the stress of the job.

In reality, he said there will probably be plenty to keep him busy through the rest of the school year.

Candy Crush season will bring him through graduation on June 21. June 30 will be his last day.

Franklin-Essex-Hamilton BOCES District Superintendent Dale Breault is in charge of the search for the new superintendent. He’ll sit down with the TLCSD board president and talk about a plan soon, Bartlett said. But hiring is more difficult now than in the past.

“Statewide, the applicant pool for any kind of administrative position is not huge,” Bartlett said. “The days of getting 15 to 20 applications for an administrative position are over.”

Bartlett said when he came to Tupper Lake in 1994, he never had any expectation of staying.

He grew up nearby, but had been living in Rochester for a while. He thought he would return to a larger suburban area.

“And 30 years later, here I am retiring from the same district I started in,” Bartlett said.

“It’s people. It’s the people, the people, the people, the people,” he added. “I think about the best friends I have in the world are people that I taught with.”

He said it has felt strange that some of the best teachers, people and colleagues in the district are people he had as chemistry students years ago. Seeing them grow up, come back and start their own careers has been “amazing,” he said.

Bartlett is sure there’s going to be something on the horizon for him after retirement. He just doesn’t want to look up yet.