RUMFORD — After serving as superintendent for Regional School Unit 10 for nearly a decade, Deb Alden is busy preparing for her retirement, which begins July 1.

In an educational career spanning 44 years, she told the board of directors late last year that it was time to step down. “I have decided it is time to retire and enjoy my family,” she said Nov. 10.

The board has hired longtime local administrator Matt Gilbert to be the next superintendent.

After initially considering work in business, education wasn’t a career Alden expected but it was one that fit her well.

“I had never believed that I would have a job like this. Sometimes you just don’t know. You just have to go where things take you,” she said.

Much of Alden’s tenure as leader of the district was consumed by her work on the January opening of the $92 million, 190,000-square-foot Mountain Valley Community School. It replaced the former Mountain Valley Middle School and Meroby Elementary School, both in Mexico, and Rumford Elementary School.

The project took nearly 10 years to complete, “and now here I am, and who knew it would take that long!” Alden said.

Alden, 65, from Leeds, said the process for the new school began in April of 2017 with an application to the state Department of Education. “I arrived in November (2016), so we had to get right on it,” she said.

She credited Mike Cormier, a retired superintendent at Mt. Blue school district in Farmington who worked for several months as interim superintendent before she began, for encouraging her to pursue it with the state.

“When I came here, I was thinking maybe six or seven years,” Alden said. “The building project really got me. I really wanted to see it through because there’s a lot to keep track of and keep the ball rolling. That’s what I saw my job being.”

It wasn’t a smooth ride, she said, as a series of challenges held up the project.

Just when it got going, the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, lasting into 2023. “I was really worried. ‘I’ve got to push this (project), no matter what. We can meet virtually. We need to push, push, push.’ And it hurt that that prices (of materials) went sky high when they did right after,” Alden said.

In October of 2024, the Mountain Valley Middle School had to close its doors prematurely due to mold problems. Some 400 grade five to eight students had to be relocated over a short period of time.

“I can honestly tell you, that’s the worst thing I’ve ever had to do in my work life, in my career. That was agonizing,” Alden said. “It’s like when you have to make a decision between two bad choices. And everybody had a different opinion about where you’re going to go and what you’re going to do.”

‘A NUMBERS PERSON’

Alden, who grew up in Hebron, received her undergraduate degree in business from the University of Maine. She ended up pursuing a master’s degree in special education and educational leadership while working and studying in New Hampshire.

She then became the special education coordinator at Merrimack High School, which serves 1,200 students, and eventually was asked to become the department head there.

Alden decided she wanted to come back to Maine to raise her two sons. She got a job in the Sacopee Valley school district in Hiram and her husband found a job in Fryeburg. They lived in Harrison at the time, so her children went to Oxford Hills schools, she said.

Alden was a special education director for 19 years — for four years in Regional School Unit 55 at Sacopee Valley in Hiram and then 15 years with Regional School Unit 52 in Turner.

It was the superintendent at Sacopee Valley that first told her she’d make a good superintendent. “It hadn’t even crossed my mind, but it gets you thinking,” she said.

Alden said that while special education was her specialty, having a background in finance and “being a numbers person” really helped her as a superintendent. When business manager Leah Kaulback went on maternity leave she got even more valuable experience on the business side of her job, she said.

“My father thought it was crazy that I had gotten this business degree, accounting and all this, and ended up going into teaching. ‘What are you doing? You’re not using your degree,’” she said. “Since then, I’ve often thought, I wish he was still alive because I’ve had to go back to that other degree and really used it in management.”

After so many years on the job, Alden said she will miss the work.

“Of course you miss people when you leave places,” she said. “I’m going to miss all the problem-solving activities. I think that’s why I’ve come up through the way I have.”

Still, she is excited to be retiring, especially getting more time with her family — one of her grandchildren is graduating high school and pursing college sports.

“My grandkids are at the top of my list. … And the traveling. We have a bucket list, and I haven’t even had time to plan. So we’ll spend the summer planning,” Alden said.