Ottoville superintendent quits for family, teaching

12/1/2007

OTTOVILLE, Ohio - Ottoville Local Schools Superintendent Larry Moore followed the traditional path from teacher to principal to superintendent. Now he's changing course.

Mr. Moore, 53, resigned Thursday night, telling the school board of the tiny district in far southwestern Putnam County, about 75 miles from Toledo, that he accepted a teaching position in Arlington, Wash. He said he and his wife want to be near their only daughter and their only grandchild.

"Life is just too short," Mr. Moore said yesterday. "If I waited to retire until I'm 65, my grandchild would be 13. I'd be reintroducing myself every time I went out there to visit."

Sue Bendele, vice president of the school board, said the board first learned it would lose its superintendent Monday and quickly scheduled a special meeting to accept his resignation, which is effective Jan. 6. The board appointed Ottoville Elementary Principal Scott Mangas as interim superintendent.

"I think that little grandbaby got the best of him," Mrs. Bendele said. "They went [to Washington] for her first birthday, and I think they're just thinking of where they want to be and where they want to spend their time."

Mr. Moore has been in the district of about 520 students for only a year. The former principal of Graham High School in Champaign County's St. Paris in west central Ohio, he was hired in October, 2006, to take over when longtime Superintendent Ken Amstutz retired.

"He's done a great job," Mrs. Bendele said. "With his experience as a high school teacher and then a high school principal, he brought a lot of great ideas to us."

Mr. Moore always has lived in Ohio, but his daughter, Nicole Burnett, a marine biologist, and her husband want to live elsewhere.

Mr. Moore said he was hired to teach business classes at Arlington High School in Arlington, Wash., beginning Jan. 7.

"I'm going back to the classroom," he said.

"I felt a need to reconnect with the reason I got into education in the first place, which was to work with young people.

"As I moved from teacher to assistant principal to principal, I got farther and farther away from that."

Contact Jennifer Feehan at:

jfeehan@theblade.com

or 419-353-5972.