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Owls in the Community: For Cate and Kress, It’s All Elementary

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Erik Kress '95
Erik Kress '95

As far as Keene State College grads Richard Cate ’64 and Erik Kress ’95 are concerned, it’s all elementary—as in elementary school. Both Cate and Kress are elementary school principals in Keene. Cate’s long tenure at the Symonds School spans 35 years, while Kress took over as the principal at the Franklin School two years ago.

Like many Keene State grads, Cate and Kress came to the College and developed an affinity for the community. “Keene is a place where people tend to put down roots and stay, because it’s a good community and a thriving place,” he said. “Sometimes we import teachers from California, but they may only stay a year or two. The Keene State people tend to stay.”

“I fell in love with Keene,” said Kress. “The community itself is very welcoming for people to stay. It’s close knit. If you know 10 people then you’re going to get to know 100 people because everyone knows everyone.”

Originally from Salem, NH, Cate, who described himself as a “lost kid” when he arrived at college, found his way along Appian Way. An education major and a member of the KSC ski team, he enjoyed the camaraderie that comes with studying at a small school. “You got to know a lot of people pretty easily and I became lifelong friends with some of the professors,” he said.

The son of longtime Granite State teachers and a runner on the Owls cross country and track teams, Kress, from Derry, NH, knew from the outset what course he would be taking at Keene State. “There was no question at all. I knew freshman year I was going to major in special education,” he said.

The KSC grads took different routes to their current positions. Cate taught at the Westmoreland and Franklin elementary schools and spent 10 years at the Roosevelt School in Keene as a teacher/principal before arriving at the Symonds School in 1980. After doing his student teaching at Keene Middle School, Kress was hired as a tutor and later became a special educator. Returning to KSC to get his master’s in educational leadership, a degree he received in 2009, Kress turned an administrative internship into an interim and finally an assistant principal position at Keene Middle School. Five years later he took over as the permanent principal at the Franklin School.

Cate says the biggest change at the Symonds School has been in staffing. “When I came here we had 18 classrooms and a staff of 23 people, and now we have 18 classrooms and a staff of 75,” he said. “It’s a much more complicated place. “

Franklin School had seen a large administrative turnover prior to Kress’s arrival. “While the challenges here are similar to other schools in Keene, Franklin’s needs have reached a higher level in many areas,” said Kress, whose wife, Johanna ’98, is a KSC grad and currently works as a physical education teacher at Keene’s Fuller Elementary School. “We’re faced with rising poverty rates, a greater intensity of special education needs, and students’ availability to learn. Students and families are requiring more and more support beyond the regular school day.”

While Cate and Kress lament the pressure that comes from outside their buildings, including federally mandated testing, both have implemented a variety of positive programs at their respective schools and are proud of the community feeling that each of their institutions embraces. “We are a community institution,” said Cate of the Symonds School, which was recently profiled as a “School that Works” on the website Edutopia. “Although recent trends in education have been toward more federal focus, our focus has always been about improving our local community and serving the children of the city of Keene.”

“The greatest thing about Franklin is the fact we are a true neighborhood school,” said Kress. “In the morning and afternoon at least half of our student body walks to school. We’re getting to meet the families that walk them every day. The more you know the children, the better you can educate them.”

Both Cate and Kress feel they are fortunate to be doing a job that they love. “The work is challenging,” said Cate. “It changes every day. Some things are the same—the kids still have their problems and issues you have to deal with, but there are enough new things that happen or things going on that make it interesting.”

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