FARMINGTON – If someone had asked him a year ago if he wanted to be the new executive director of the Franklin County Children’s Task Force, Tom Taylor said he would have said “No, thank you.”
But after 38 years in education, with 28 as an administrator in SAD 9, including 13 of those as principal of Cascade Brook School, Taylor is now looking forward to a career after retirement.
Taylor, of Farmington, is the new executive director of the task force.
And, he’s liking it.
“I’m very happy,” Taylor said Thursday.
Taylor had taken over as interim director in December after Steve Russell left to take another job. He was named full-time director last Friday.
Taylor said that after he retired from education, he expected to do something else, but he didn’t know what.
Now he does.
“It’s challenging from a different perspective from education, at least administering an elementary school,” Taylor said of his new job.
When he was an administrator, he went in with a planned day, but a lot of times he ended up doing other things that came up.
This job allows him to decide what he wants to do at his own pace and stick with it. The stress level is lower in his new job because he has much more control over his work than he did in the school setting.
“I like that part of it because you’re in charge of it,” Taylor said.
He is very impressed with the staff and the work they do, he said.
“They believe very much in what they do and they feel they can make a difference,” he said.
Taylor said he didn’t know all that the organization did until he became a part of it. Now the challenge is to make sure others know what the task force offers.
When he was asked to be the task force director, Taylor said, he thought it would be good to be part of it and try to make it grow.
“Selfishly,” he said, “I really liked the bullying/teasing prevention program offered to Franklin County schools and Livermore.”
Taylor said he saw the program as one of the most valuable in SAD 9.
“Like it or not, bullying is taking place,” he said.
Taylor said he saw many changes in the school environment and the students after the program was implemented. Those changes include the school’s being a more friendly place for students, which in turn caused the absentee rate to drop.
Taylor is also part of an effort putting together a curriculum for bullying- and teasing-prevention for child-care centers.
The task force offers a variety of programs that help children and teach parents ways to create healthy families. The organization touches the lives of hundreds of children and their families through those programs.
Taylor said it is a challenge to the organization to write more grants and keep up the marketing and advertising of the important work it does.
The task force’s 2005 budget is a little more than $300,000, Taylor said, compared with last year’s $325,000.
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