Rafford steps down as Hodgdon High School principal

  HODGDON, Maine — When Hodgdon High School students return to class Wednesday, Aug. 24, a familiar face will be missing from the hallway.
Principal Clark Rafford has stepped down from his position after 15 years with the district. His final day at the school is set for Friday. He starts his new job as principal of Telstar Regional Middle School in Bethel on Monday, Aug. 22.
    Rafford was approved for the position by the SAD 44 school board on Aug. 8. He replaces Sandy Schroeder, who served as the middle school principal for three years.
His successor at Hodgdon High School has yet to be determined. Mary Harbison, the assistant principal at Mill Pond Elementary School, will take over as the interim high school principal, according to Superintendent Bob McDaniel.
“We’re in the process of advertising the position and once we get a pool of candidates, we will start the interview process,” he said. “Mary is quite capable of serving as our interim, so we will not rush into anything.”
McDaniel had nothing but praise for Rafford.
“Clark came on as principal about the same time I came on as superintendent,” McDaniel said. “He’s provided fine leadership to the district during some tough times. He was moving the school in the right direction and will be missed.”
Those tough times included Hodgdon High School being named by the Maine Department of Education as one of 10 “low achieving schools” based on SAT progress over a three-year period. Rafford said it was unfortunate that Hodgdon High School is known as a low performing school.
“We are much better than that,” he said. “Granted there is room for improvement. To me, it was mislabeling schools based on a formula and the turmoil that we have had to go through was really unfounded.”
Rafford said he was disappointed that he will not be around to see the plans the district has laid out come to fruition, but is confident SAD 70, and Hodgdon High School in particular, is moving in the right direction.
A native of Ashland, Rafford attended college at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, earning a degree in education. He joined the U.S. Air Force and spent 14 years on active duty. He also spent nine years in the Army National Guard. He received his master’s degree in aeronautical science from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
In the military, his first duty assignment was a missile maintenance officer. He progressed to the recruiting service — a position he describes as the “best job in the military” he ever had. He was responsible for recruiting in upstate New York and Pennsylvania.
Later, he got back into his specialty and  moved to Germany where he spent three years working with ground-launch cruise missiles as the missile/nuclear weapons safety officer. He was then relocated to California where he did further work with missile and nuclear weapons until the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty was signed and his entire division was eliminated from the U.S. Air Force.
From there, he decided to move into the education field.
Rafford began at SAD 70 as the assistant principal in 1994 and spent four years in that capacity. He then spent two years in Machias as a high school principal and also served as principal at Southern Aroostook Community School before returning to SAD 70 as its high school principal.
Interestingly enough, Rafford had applied for a principal position in SAD 44 two other times — once in 1993 while working in Dixfield and again in 1999 while employed at Machias.
“A couple of the board members were still on the board and remembered me,” he said. “They told me the third time was the charm.”
Rafford said while many of his duties will be similar, the fact that he will be in a completely new environment has him energized for the start of the school year.
“It will be all new, so I will have to just listen, see what’s going on, be observant and just be visible in the school,” he said. “I’m looking forward to dealing with middle school students. One of my goals is to better prepare middle school kids so they can be better high school students.”
He added that he hopes to be able to plant the seed of career paths with his new middle school students. Telstar Regional Middle/High School, with about 257 students in grades 6-8, is similar in size to Hodgdon, which was another selling point for Rafford.
He said the decision to leave HHS and uproot with his wife Deborah to an unfamiliar area was not easy. The decision was actually a couple of years in the works, Rafford said. While he regrets leaving a week before the start of the new school year, the timing was unavoidable.
“I didn’t want to wait and leave once the school year started,” he said. “This was one of those decisions that was really hard to make. From a personal perspective, there’s moving your household. And then there’s also finding a new home, which at the moment I don’t have yet.
“I’m going to miss the community component that’s built into this school district,” he continued. “There is a familiarity here that I will miss.”
One of the biggest reasons for the move, though, is to be closer to his children.
“I’m at a point where I’m looking at where my family is,” he said. “My mom and dad still live in Ashland, but our children are in the southern Maine area.”
His eldest son, Robert is in active duty with the U.S. Navy who will reside in the Lewiston-Auburn area once he retires in the next five years. His son Donnie lives in Portland, while his youngest, Andrew, lives in Lancaster, Pa.
“I’ll be significantly closer to my children, which was a big selling point,” Rafford said.