Jacquelyn Wilson knows as much about the Indian River School District as anyone. She started her extensive education career as a paraprofessional at Lord Baltimore Elementary School. After graduating from college she worked as a teacher in the district. Wilson then served as an assistant principal and principal at Lord Baltimore before leaving to work for the Delaware Department of Education.
Now, although she works for the University of Delaware, Wilson will look to assume about the only position in the district in which she hasn’t served. In the district’s School Board election in May, she will run against current board president and 29-year school board veteran Charles Bireley.
“It really is important that when you’ve been blessed to be in a great community, you have to give back,” said Wilson, a Frankford resident. “I bring a lot of experience. I see myself providing support, vision and direction.”
William Beckman, a Millville native with three decades of public education experience in Maryland, had already filed to run against Bireley for the fourth district seat about three weeks ago. With the recent addition of Wilson, in an election should give local residents a list of qualified applicants.
“I have a lot of respect for her,” Bireley said of Wilson. “She’s very qualified for the job.”
While working on her undergraduate degree at Salisbury University, the 1970 Indian River High School graduate accepted a job as a paraprofessional at Lord Baltimore Elementary School in Ocean View.
After graduating with a degree in education in 1976, she took her first teaching job, teaching third grade at East Milsboro Elementary School. Wilson only stayed there one year, however, before returning to Ocean View where she taught first grade for another year. When she started her graduate program at Salisbury University in 1979, she took a job as fifth grade teacher at Lord Baltimore. While teaching at the school, she earned her master’s degree in 1981 and the next year, she won the first of many of her many awards as an educator.
In 1982, she was named Delaware Teacher of the Year in her fourth of nine years as a fifth grade teacher at the Ocean View School. Wilson stayed at Lord Baltimore in 1987 but switched roles, taking a position as a reading specialist after taking more courses at Salisbury. She held that job until 1992 when she took her first job as an administrator, assuming the position as an assistant principal at Georgetown Elementary in what she called one of the best moves of her career.
“That was one of the best things I ever did,” Wilson said. “I got a feel for the district as a whole.”
After a five-year stint at the school, she returned to Lord Baltimore 1996 as an assistant principal. Wilson only held that position for one year before accepting the principal’s job, however, assuming a position she retained until 2002. That year, the Ocean View elementary school was the first Delaware School to be named a National Blue Ribbon School by the United States Department of Education, she said. Along with that honor, Wilson was also named as a National Distinguished Principal in 2002.
And when things didn’t seem like they could get any better, Wilson left the Indian River School District for the first time in her career to work as the director of professional accountability. There, she worked with all of the state’s school districts and directly for the state education department’s director, Valerie Woodruff.
Wilson left that position after two years to work as the director of graduate programs for Wilmington College at its Dover and Georgetown locations. But she still ran an education program for the state although in 2004, she earned her retirement at 30 years. Wilson continues as the project director now for the Delaware Department of Education’s State Action for Education Leadership Project even after taking a position with the University of Delaware.
As the project director, she oversees the program which identifies talent in the state’s public schools and helps train them to become successful administrators even while serving in two sports at the university.
There, she is the director for its Southern Programming and the Associate Director of the Delaware Academy for School Leadership. And now, after a four-year absence she wants to return to the Indian River School District, a district she calls the “sleeping giant” in Delaware.
“I love public education,” Wilson said. “I love this community and I believe I would be an asset to the board. I have the utmost respect for Mr. Bireley. We just happen to live in the same area.”
And, she added, if someone is going to take the 29-year school board vet’s spot, it should be someone as experienced as she is in the world of Delaware Public Education and the Indian River District.
“Mr. Bireley has had his 30 years to provide direction.”