Saint-Amand steps away from career of achievement at South Lenoir High

Steve Saint-Amand, principal of South Lenoir High School for the past 10 years, speaks at June’s commencement exercise. Saint-Amand’s retirement on Friday ends a 28-year career in education, all but two of those years spent at South Lenoir. Submitted photo.

A self-described creature of habit, Steve Saint-Amand says his feet “still hit the floor at 5:30” every morning. When they hit the floor out of habit last week, though, Steve Saint-Amand took a big step toward a new routine called retirement.

After 28 years – all but two of them as a teacher, coach and principal at South Lenoir High School – Saint-Amand has called an end to a career in education that must be judged a success by any measure – by the passion he brought to it, by the enjoyment he got out of it, by the innovations he hatched and the accolades he received for hatching them, by the respect his leadership engendered among his students and the residents of a rural community whose high school is its centerpiece.

It’s a lot to leave behind, especially with a final school year that, because of the coronavirus pandemic, ended with an ellipsis instead of a well-deserved exclamation point.

“With Covid and the way the school year ended, it’s been surreal,” Saint-Amand said of his retirement on Friday, officially his last day. “I don’t guess I’ve really had the opportunity to process it the normal way.”

It’s difficult to separate Steve Saint-Amand’s adult life from South Lenoir High School. He began his career in education there as a social studies teacher in August 1992, just months after graduating from the University of North Carolina. He met his future wife, Megan, when she started at the high school as an English teacher that same year; they married in 1994 and now have three daughters. Their two oldest, Madison and Malone, graduated from South Lenoir before heading to – and graduating from – UNC. 

After 16 years as a teacher who eventually became chair of South Lenoir’s Social Studies Department and two years as an assistant principal at North Duplin Junior/Senior High School, he returned to South Lenoir as the sixth principal in the school’s 70-year history. His 10-year tenure is the third longest on that list.

“I am very blessed that I was able to spend virtually my entire career as a teacher and principal at one location,” Saint-Amand said. “I am very thankful to my superintendents and to my boards that I was able to stay. That lets me know I was doing a good job. That lets me know the community was pleased with what I was doing.”

His decade of leadership brought to South Lenoir notable academic improvement and significant initiatives that Saint-Amand believes fueled that student achievement.

Test scores rose and the dropout rate fell when the principal and his top students instituted a peer-to-peer Math I tutoring program three years ago. His promotion of College and Career Promise, a program that allows students to earn both a diploma from South Lenoir and an associate degree from Lenoir County College in four years, achieved record results this past school year when 13 seniors became double graduates.

An innovative approach to school breakfast that Saint-Amand debuted six years ago doubled the number of morning meals served to students, earned the school a statewide award and encouraged other high schools to copy it. A personal reevaluation of the school’s discipline policies resulted in a dramatic drop in out-of-school suspensions – from about 400 in 2013-14 to just 37 in 2018-19 – and much less classroom time lost to behavior problems.

“I just knew the best way for our test scores to go up was to have students in school. South Lenoir was not benefiting and the students were not benefiting. I had to find another way to combat that,” Saint-Amand said. “We fully changed our methods of how we dealt with discipline. We started communicating more with our students, trying to talk them through problems, trying to work with them and truly make suspension a last resort.

“As a result our test scores went up, we did not have a spike in our discipline and we had buy-in from our staff. I really think that first year when they saw test scores go up they realized it was not a coincidence that having students in class five or 10 or 15 more days apiece played a major role,” he said.

That’s a lot of change at a school where tradition is held dear and in a community that has generational ties not just to the school but also to the idea of the school, particularly for a principal who knows his students and their families – likely former students – as longtime neighbors.

“Every day I make a decision I’m going to make somebody mad. It’s tough to be a leader,” Saint-Amand said. “It’s more than just being the principal. It’s being a connection to the people and the community. It’s something I valued and something I understood. I’m very proud of the fact that South Lenoir has been willing to change.”

More change is ahead, of course. Megan Saint-Amand, the school’s English Department chair, has retired with her husband after 29 years in the classroom. Daphne Pollock, a South Lenoir fixture for nearly all the years Saint-Amand was there and an assistant principal for all 10 years of his tenure, has retired after 25 years in education.

Elizabeth Pierce is the new principal, moving from E.B. Frink Middle School, where she earned Southeast Region Principal of the Year honors in 2019. A former assistant principal at Woodington Middle and principal at Moss Hill Elementary, both schools in the South Lenoir attendance zone, Pierce earned Saint-Amand’s respect years ago.

“I could not be more impressed with Elizabeth as a person and an administrator,” he said. “She’s what South Lenoir needs at this time.”

For Saint-Amand, who sees elements of public service in the role of principal, the change ahead will have familiar undertones.

“My next adventure will be trying to campaign to be a county commissioner,” he said. “If that’s the will of the people, I’ll do that. If not, then I have a lot of other things I’ll be doing with my family. It’s just great to have this opportunity to be able to pick and choose going forward.”

But even in the freedom of retirement, some things don’t yield to choice. The habit of rising early, for instance. Or the instinct to help others.

“I was born to serve,” the former principal said. “I’ve always thought of this job as serving, whether as a coach or a teacher or a principal. My job was to serve my community and to make sure my kids at South Lenoir High School had every opportunity they needed to be able to succeed. I certainly hope I’ve done that well because that was my intent.”