Five educators will retire from Shoreline Unified School District at the end of this school year. Debbie Tambussi, Daniel Broderick, William Tucker, Sally Mazzucchi and Steffan O’Neil have been with the district for decades and are fixtures in the school community.
In March, the district’s certificated staff finalized a three-year contract that included a retirement incentive: if at least three certificated staffers who would have served 15 or more years by June 1 decided to retire, they would each receive $17,500 in addition to their standard retirement package.
Shoreline Superintendent Bob Raines said that it is customary for the district to make such offers from time to time; according to him, 30 years is “the magic number” at which California public school teachers often retire due to the way the state calculates retirement benefits.
Most of the staff leaving this year said that the added incentive was not a tipping point: after so many decades, they had simply decided it was time to move on. Mr. Tucker and his wife are the primary childcare babysitters for their 11-month-old grandson, and Ms. Tambussi said that after having worked since she was 15, she was excited to have a break.
Yet each educator said that there was much they would miss, from the students to the school community.
“It can be a stressful job, but it has to fit our personalities, and it’s really fit mine like a glove,” Mr. Broderick said. “It’s why I have some trepidation about walking away from it.”
Even during his years as a C.P.A., Mr. Broderick always had one foot in the door of special education. As a volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Special Olympics, he found he enjoyed such work more than dealing with taxes and accounting.
“I’m just a teacher at heart,” he said. He decided to get a master’s degree in special education and began teaching in the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado. When he and his wife came out to California to visit a friend in Mill Valley, they fell in love with West Marin, and Mr. Broderick began working as Tomales High’s special education teacher in 1996.
In that role, he helps students with learning differences or those who simply need extra support with everything from reading to math reasoning, trying to give them the skills they need to integrate into a standard classroom. “The idea is we want to teach ourselves out of a job,” he said, only half joking.
It’s a job, Tomales High Principal Adam Jennings said, for which Mr. Broderick is exceptionally suited. “He creates a compassionate and really loving environment for all of his kids, and he worked with some of the kids who struggled, have more learning challenges than any other on campus. And yet he highlights their abilities, their strengths; he challenges them to be as thoughtful and academic as any kid on campus. He really has been a treasure for this school,” Mr. Jennings said.
Like Mr. Broderick, Mr. Tucker also came to teaching through coaching. He was working at an insurance company in San Rafael when he began coaching freshman basketball and baseball at a school in Forestville and subsequently decided to get a teaching credential.
He was hired at Tomales Elementary in 1989 as the eighth-grade teacher, and since that time has taught either seventh or eighth grade, with a stint teaching geometry and algebra at Tomales High. He now teaches seventh graders.
“It’s a transition year, seventh grade, because they have runaway hormones, they’re easily distracted, but I love them,” he said. “It’s my class.”
Mr. Raines said that over the course of Mr. Tucker’s tenure, “he’s put a really positive stamp on a lot of kids coming through Tomales Elementary and the high school.”
Ms. Tambussi started working at Tomales Elementary School in 1989 as a kindergarten teacher. Though she has also taught first grade and combination classes, 24 years of her career have been spent in kindergarten.
“That’s where I want to be,” she said. “Everything is exciting: they’re full of joy and excitement. They keep you young and spirited. It’s a lot of work, but for me that’s where my heart lies.”
Even as the state’s educational standards have become more rigorous, Ms. Tambussi said that she has always held that it is equally important to tend to her students’ emotional needs. “They need to feel safe and welcome, like this is a family,” she said.
Mr. Raines said Ms. Tambussi is “pretty much an institution” at the school, “one of those teachers that students come back to well into their high school years and beyond to let her know how they’re doing.”
Mr. O’Neill, the school counselor at Tomales and Bodega Bay Elementary Schools, has been with the district for 30 years. He began filling in when the previous counselor was on leave and ended up staying, serving students at both the elementary and high-school level.
“He’s developed a good rapport and sense of connection [with the students],” Mr. Raines said. “The kids understand he’s there for them.”
Ms. Mazzucchi, who started subbing at Tomales Elementary in 1998, is the school’s jack-of-all-trades. She has worked as a substitute in every grade, and in the administrative office and library. She has also coordinated the school’s disaster preparedness efforts, managed the school garden and overseen the yearbook. “I have my fingers in everything around here,” she said.
In her current role as instructional assistant, Ms. Mazzucchi helps teachers “wherever they need, with whatever they want,” which includes everything from laminating to in-class math instruction. Mr. Raines praised her wide range of experience and said it has contributed to her status as “everyone’s mom for generations of students and their teachers.” He added that “Sally’s time at Tomales Elementary has been a personification of the importance and value of our classified staff.”
Once the school year ends, Ms. Mazzucchi is looking forward to spending more time with her grandchildren and having more time to travel. “I’m just going to have time to do things when I want,” she said. “I think that’s what retirement is about.”