Former SAD 33 leader earns national award

VAN BUREN, Maine — Jerry White, former SAD 33 superintendent, was recently inducted into the National Rural Education Association Hall of Fame at its national conference in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

White’s career began in 1967 as a business teacher in Van Buren. He returned home from military service, where he served as a Russian linguist/translator, and taught through 1983. 

He began as an administrator in North Haven. Throughout the next 40 years he received Superintendent of the Year awards, recognition as one of 20 AASA/Apple Computer President’s Technology awardees, served on numerous committees and task forces, led a Blue Ribbon School, serves on the Governance Board for the Regional Education Lab Northeast and the Islands of Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands, according to David M. Ardrey, executive director of the Association of Illinois Rural and Small Schools and chairman of the National Rural Education Association Foundation.

“His work with NREA has been invaluable, and for this organization and all rural schools his crowning achievement occurred in 2000, when he served as the principal author of the REAP legislation and worked with Senator Collins and others to see this legislation passed,” Ardrey said.