Goodin
CROTHERSVILLE — Having a father in the education field and good teachers and mentors early in life led Terry Goodin on that same path.
After graduating from Austin High School, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from Eastern Kentucky University. Then he returned to his hometown and taught for three and a half years.
Meanwhile, he obtained his administrative license from Indiana University Southeast.
Then he took a sabbatical in 1993-94 and finished the coursework for his doctorate at Indiana University.
Goodin was a teacher for a semester before being hired as assistant principal at AHS. Following a year in that role, he was in the same position at Bloomington High School South before returning closer to home as superintendent of Crothersville Community School Corp.
On Tuesday, he will wrap up nearly 24 years in his only superintendent role, as the board of school trustees unanimously approved his retirement during a special meeting Jan. 14.
He recently sent an email to employees, contracted workers and bus drivers, part-time and substitute employees and volunteers of the corporation, calling retirement “exciting but bittersweet.”
“I am excited to take the next steps in my life but sad I am retiring from a job I love so much,” he wrote.
He then thanked those people and others associated with the corporation for their hard work and dedication to the children of Crothersville.
“As I have said many times, there is no hierarchy or levels of authority when it comes to educating and caring for children,” he wrote. “No matter what job you perform at Crothersville schools, you are a part of the team that cares for our kids and makes our school successful. We together have accomplished great things at our small school. For that, I say, ‘Thank you.’”
In closing, he thanked his family for all of the love and support they have provided him, especially his parents, who taught him to always treat people fair and do work that helps make a positive difference in someone else’s life.
“Crothersville schools is a great school filled with great folks who I consider the best, big-hearted educational family in the whole wide world,” Goodin wrote. “I thank God for allowing me the opportunity to work with so many wonderful people over the past two decades. Thank you, Crothersville, for all of the great memories.”
During the special meeting, board President Linda Luedeman thanked Goodin.
“We certainly appreciate all of the good things and forward thinking you’ve done for our school system, our students and our community,” she said.
On Thursday, Luedeman said the board met in executive session at the beginning of the week to discuss the process of finding Goodin’s replacement.
First, the board is going to hire an interim superintendent to help for the remainder of the semester. Luedeman said that person may work on a part-time basis.
“We really want to get someone in there quickly, but we want it to be a good person,” she said. “We are on it. We are just trying to find that perfect fit for us right now so we can search for that new candidate for us.”
The corporation also has posted the superintendent job on the Indiana Department of Education website in hopes of finding a person to start full time this summer. Applications will be accepted through March 18.
“At that point, we’ll have a committee that will review the applications and we’ll start the interviewing process then,” Luedeman said. “It is our hope that maybe the May, June board meeting we’ll have a worthy candidate that we love and they love us and we will hire them, and hopefully, the start date would then be July 1.”
Goodin, 55, has served as superintendent since July 28, 1998. He said he stepped into a good position because of the way the corporation had been led by the previous superintendent, Kim Thurston.
He also had administrators and central office staff who worked together.
“As a new superintendent, I just kind of started fresh and green and just knew what I wanted to get accomplished, our goals, and that was to move forward and try to increase rigor and always be moving forward,” he said. “In education, if you’re standing still, that means you’re getting left behind, so I just always had that philosophy.”
Goodin said a big accomplishment during his tenure was starting the early college program that gives students an opportunity to earn an associate degree and also advanced vocational programming to earn certifications, all while in high school.
“We’ve kept millions of dollars in the community that would have been spent at the bookstore at IU, Purdue or wherever they went to college,” Goodin said of the associate degree program, which started as the Austin Crothersville Early College Initiative and now is known as University Academy.
Students receive an associate degree in general studies from Ivy Tech Community College for completing that program, while vocational certifications are earned through programming at Ivy Tech or C4 Columbus Area Career Connection.
“The vocational side of that is just as important,” Goodin said. “Those programs that our kids are allowed to take are expensive and costly, as well, if they have to go to trade school after they graduate from high school. They choose their pathway on what they want to do in life, and we create that pathway and help them accomplish it.”
Also during his tenure, a building project was completed in 2002 and 2003, sports facilities and technology were upgraded and a roof and solar project recently began.
“It has been a great team with myself, my administrators, teachers, parents, everybody working together,” Goodin said. “I’m just thrilled to death for the opportunity to have been able to be a part of Crothersville Community Schools for as long as I was. We’ve been able to maintain our educational integrity as we moved forward to be able to accomplish more good things.”
Goodin said he recently began considering retirement, and there’s a reason he chose to retire now.
“That’s going to benefit the school because they can get the new person in and start working on the next school year,” he said. “For me to stay there until the end of the (school) year would make no sense looking forward into the future for the school corporation. I’m just thrilled that it worked out and we’re all in good condition and shape and we have enjoyed what we’ve done and done a good thing.”
Like he mentioned in the letter, it was a tough decision.
“A lot of sleepless nights wondering whether or not it was the right decision, but you trust in the Lord you’re making the right decision, and as you go forward, you just ask for guidance along the way as an individual to make sure you’re doing the right thing,” Goodin said. “At the end of the day, you know you’ve made the right choice if you follow those guidelines.”
He said retirement will give him an opportunity to pursue several of his interests.
“I love farming, so I’ll probably look at something maybe in the agricultural field,” Goodin said. “I’m retiring from education, but I’m not leaving totally, so at some point, I may do something along the lines on the educational side. But at this point, I think I’m just going to step back and take a deep breath and look at what all of the options are and move forward from there.”