September 5 will be Day 1 for Montauk School students – a Thursday, which should give them a soft landing after summer vacation. For the second September in a row, Jack Perna, the school’s longtime superintendent and principal, will still be on vacation, however, having retired in 2023 after more than 50 years.
Hired by then-principal Robert Fisher, Mr. Perna had a number of other mentors as well – he mentioned Marge Bellefontaine, Barbara Borth, Peggy Joyce, and Peg Winski as some, in an oral history interview at the Montauk Library this summer. It so happens that the Montauk Library Archives also include oral histories with Mr. Fisher and all those teachers except Peg Winski, who conducted her own interviews from the other side of the microphone.
Over his long career Mr. Perna oversaw the addition of a school wing as well as prekindergarten and elementary science programs, remote instruction and student distancing during Covid, and armed security guards in response to mass shootings at other schools. He was never the type of administrator to hide behind an office door, making regular appearances in the classrooms, halls, to greet students at the beginning of the school day, and to send them off at the end. His earliest charges are now in their 50s and 60s, and he was responsible for the education of not only their children but sometimes their grandchildren.
Outside the school building, times have certainly changed since 1973, when Mr. Perna started teaching at Mr. Fisher’s suggestion. Inside the school building, however, Mr. Perna said, he saw a great deal of consistency. “Kids are kids,” he explained.
“Everything’s genetic … I remember dealing with certain students and just watching their movements. And then their kids, 30 years later, their movements are exactly the same. ‘Your father used to do the same thing,’ or ‘Your mother used to do that, too.’”
Click here to listen to the full interview.
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