SAN ANTONIO, Texas — North East ISD Superintendent Brian Gottardy is turning in his last school report this year, having announced his retirement at a school board meeting Monday night.
“I just felt like it was time for me to move on. To do this job right is a very, very hard job and it’s a job that I have taken extremely serious,” Gottardy said.
He said he’s been mulling retirement for some time now, adding that making the announcement public was a little tough.
"Pretty emotional to tell my colleagues and tell the board of trustees…that I'm going to retire,” Gottardy said.
Over the last eight years NEISD has become a second home for the coach-turned-administrator.
"I tell people quite often that many days if I'm not sleeping that I'm working," he said.
As the superintendent of the second largest school district in Bexar County, Gottardy oversees 65,000 students at 68 schools, in addition to managing 9,000 employees. The former coach attends sports games in the evenings and plays on the weekends. It’s a job without a clock-out time, and a career he tackled from the ground up.
"I began my career at NEISD in 1985 as a teacher and a coach at John Wood Middle School and I spent three years at John Wood," Gottardy said.
Then, in 2011, he was selected as the superintendent of NEISD.
During his leadership he's overseen the passing of two bonds focused on equity and renovation of older schools, but he said his most significant accomplishment is passing budget cuts and maintaining a high level of performance in and out of the classroom.
"We have to continue to do great things with less money, so we had to trim our budget. We had to trim personnel throughout the years,” Gottardy said.
Colleen Bohrmann, executive director of Learning Support Services, has worked at NEISD for 34 years and said she's seen superintendents come and go, but she said this departure will be an emotional one.
"He taught us what a three-sixty student means…that every piece of that student is important; the academics, the sports, the social and emotional part,” Bohrmann said.
Now that the legislative session is underway, Gottardy said a new focus on education seems promising and it gives him some peace.
"What I am going to do is take some time to be with my family, take some time to do some traveling, really take some time to reflect about where I've been and where do I go from here," he said.
Gottardy will officially retire on June 30. The school board plans to discuss later this month how to conduct a search for his successor.