AUBURN – When Principal Donna Sawyer left Saint Peter’s School in a tearful sendoff six years ago, teacher Rosetta Girouard tried to make the goodbye bearable.

“I remember saying to her, You know, you can always come back home,'” she said.

No one, including Girouard, thought Sawyer would. After all, the longtime teacher and administrator was leaving for a higher-paying job at a larger school. She was moving up in her career, moving on.

“I thought we lost her,” Girouard said.

But when 150 students and 15 teachers fill Saint Peter and Sacred Heart School next week, Sawyer will be right there for the new school year. And a happy reunion.

Sawyer is returning as principal.

“It’s really like coming back home,” she said.

Sawyer first became principal of Saint Peter’s School in 1995 when the 120-year-old school was located in downtown Lewiston. It was owned and operated by the Saints Peter and Paul Parish.

With her passion for academics, technology and the Catholic school community, Sawyer helped increase enrollment from 125 to 175 students in prekindergarten through grade eight. Over the years, she became an advocate for the tiny Catholic school and it became her second family. When one of her sons was diagnosed with cancer, teachers, students and parents all offered their prayers.

“It’s amazing the support you get as a teacher and a student in a Catholic school,” she said.

But in 1998, a central Maine public school offered her $15,000 more a year to be its leader. As a single mother with three sons, she needed the money.

/////Welcome back//////

As the years passed, Saint Peter’s moved to Auburn, got additional support from the Sacred Heart Church and changed its name to Saint Peter’s and Sacred Heart School. It went through two more principals.

Sawyer became head of a 300-student elementary school in Windsor, where she was responsible for dozens of teachers, cafeteria workers, janitors and bus drivers. She often got up at 4 a.m. just to finish paperwork.

Sawyer found that she loved the kids but not the job. There were too many headaches.

She gave her notice and enrolled in graduate school at the University of Maine. She intended to take a couple of years off while she earned a master’s degree in guidance counseling. Then she heard Saint Peter’s was looking for a new principal.

On her last day in Windsor – exactly one week after she interviewed at Saint Peter’s – she learned she got the job.

As Sawyer celebrated, so did Saint Peter’s and Sacred Heart School. Of the 15 teachers there, only three didn’t know her.

“She has so much energy and enthusiasm. And that creates a wonderful atmosphere for us,” Girouard said.

By midsummer, Sawyer was decorating her new office with mementos. Among the tabletop photos of her sons, she placed a picture of Saint Peter’s Class of 1998, the eighth-graders who graduated the year she left. On the wall next to her desk, she put up a white canvas covered in the small colorful handprints from 1998’s kindergarten class.

When school opens Monday, she will see those kids for the first time in six years. They will be seventh-graders. She will once again be their principal.

“I think she will help us grow as a school in numbers and in quality,” Girouard said. “And as she always says, We’ll have fun in the process.'”