Greg Stowell is the newly hired superintendent of the Garrison school district.
How did you get your start in the field?
I come from an education family. My father was a director of special education for Southern Westchester BOCES and director of special education for the Putnam Valley district. My mom was the assistant superintendent for business for the Pelham district. But I didn’t always know that’s what I wanted to do. When I was 15, I had a summer job at a YMCA camp in White Plains as a counselor in training. When the head counselor quit, they gave me that job. The minute I started engaging with the kids and developing activities, I thought, “I love doing this. This is incredible.”
You began your career in special education. Was there a moment when you felt you had made an impact?
When I worked in the Chappaqua district, there was a third grader who was dyslexic. She was smart but could barely read. She had a couple of sight words. No phonemic awareness. No ability to decode words. After a year, we got her nearly to grade level. Maybe 10 or 15 years later, I was eating dinner at the Blazer Pub near Purdys. This young lady came up to the table. I didn’t recognize her but she reminded me of her name. She said: “Mr. Stowell, I just want to tell you that, because of you, I was able to read, and now I’m in college studying to be a teacher.”
Why did you transition to administration?
I wanted to have an impact outside of the four walls of the classroom, and the only way to do that is to go into educational leadership. My philosophy is: “What’s your why? Why are you in this business?” My why is to improve outcomes for students. At Garrison, it’s iterative. We’re working to improve literacy. We’re working on our next phase of environmental education and sustainability. We’re looking to leverage our 182-acre forest by working with Putnam-Northern Westchester BOCES. We’re taking a hard look at next-generation learning standards and what we need to equip our kids to be successful.
You’ve been superintendent for four months. Has anything surprised you?
Every school system I’ve been in has been larger. My last district, Eastchester, had 3,100 kids. We have 214 in Garrison, not including those in high school. The one thing I wasn’t prepared for is how different it is leading a school with one or two classes per grade. It’s wonderful because you can impact kids quickly, but we don’t have the same resources as a larger district. When we want to do big, bold things, we have to be creative. For example, we put on a Youth Climate Summit where we bring in 180 kids from multiple districts. It gets bigger every year. We’re realizing that it’s hard to pull that off with few people, educators and custodians. We’re starting to engage with partner districts to maybe co-sponsor it.
What is your life like outside work?
My wife and I live in Bethel, Connecticut. I have a daughter who is a freshman at American University in Washington, D.C., and a son who is a junior in high school. We have a dog named Josie. She’s a rescue. We’re avid skiers and love to go to Vermont and sometimes out west. Every summer we visit Acadia National Park in Maine, where the hiking is incredible. My wife’s family has been going there for 50 years. It’s a family tradition. We go to the same cabins in the same place.
