NEW SHARON – SAD 9 leader Michael Cormier has been named Superintendent of the Year for 2008 by the Maine School Superintendents Association, the group announced Tuesday.

“I was really honored to be nominated and selected,” Cormier said.

Nominated by a colleague, Cormier had to complete an application that included five one-page essays, he said. That application will be forwarded for a national 2008 Superintendent of the Year competition where he will represent Maine, he added.

“I know of no better candidate, as an example of a leader of leaders,” a colleague of Cormier’s wrote in support. “His dedicated service and professional support of others is Mike’s greatest strength. His dedication to his students and education excellence is obvious to all that know him.”

The humble, humorous man, who has led SAD 9 for the past 15 years, said the quality of education and opportunities for children to excel and go forward with their education or careers as what he is most proud of.

“That quality of education,” he added, “is a credit to the level of staff in SAD 9 and their commitment to children.”

With a daughter, now a student at Rochester Institute of Technology and a Mt. Blue graduate, and a son who is a junior at Mt. Blue, Cormier said, “you learn a lot about a school system when you have children in them.”

The Augusta native completed his undergraduate studies at what is now called the University of Southern Maine before teaching social studies, science and spelling to seventh- and eighth-graders in Bradley, he said. After a couple years, he became a teaching principal of middle school literature there and pursued his master’s degree in literacy.

“As a social studies teacher, I realized that children needed to be able to read if I wanted them to read the book,” he said.

He went on to get a certificate of advance study that led to his first job as a superintendent at Deer Isle-Stonington. He was superintendent at Searsport before coming to Franklin County in 1993.

Now, Cormier sees the possible future consolidation of the school system with SAD 58 as having the potential to do good for children and school programs.

“I’m not convinced it will save money,” he said, “but it’s not about money. It’s about offering broader opportunities for children.”

As the school system realizes declining enrollments, a larger school system lends to keeping better programs for children, especially in the areas of music, art and elementary foreign languages. Items that often are reviewed at budget time, he said.

It also lends to sharing resources between school systems, something already being done, he added, with the music program, technology and accounting departments.

“It’s not an easy process. Change is difficult,” he said of consolidation. “Ultimately, the citizens will decide but I need to be helpful in designing a proposal that they can decide upon.”