After 33 years working in public education -- the last 19 of which were spent as superintendent of the Lakeside School District -- Shawn Cook will retire at the end of June.
Cook, 55, formally announced his retirement during Tuesday night's regular monthly school board meeting.
"Shawn retires as one of the most respected superintendents in Arkansas," Bart Bledsoe, Lakeside board president, said on Friday. "He leaves a legacy at Lakeside that will not soon be forgotten. Shawn worked day to day to follow his motto of 'Kids First.' And while we will miss Shawn at Lakeside, we are all excited for him in his next phase of life."
After graduating from Walnut Ridge High School in 1986, Cook received his bachelor's degree in education at Arkansas State University before later earning his master's degree from Henderson State University. His first teaching job was at Malvern High School, where he taught and coached from 1990-1993 before serving the next three years in the Ouachita School District as K-12 assistant principal and eventually high school principal. He moved on to become principal at Magnet Cove High School and then superintendent of the district before making his way to Lakeside.
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"My wife and I had planned for quite some time, just thinking that, 'Hey, someday when our kids are out on their own ... ' You know, we said we would look at it and just see how we felt," he said.
Cook's son recently took a job teaching in the Greenbrier School District and his daughter lives in Mississippi.
"I wanted to make sure, too, that things were going great at school, and they are," he said. "This has been one of my best years ever. We have an excellent school board that works very hard together and does a great job. And our team's solid. Things are going really good here."
He said he announced his decision now in order to give the school board plenty of time to transition.
"But it just seemed like a perfect time for me, you know, to start the next chapter of my life. Because I'm still very happy, working with kids; I still enjoy it. And I didn't want to wait until a time where it wasn't that way. I had been told before, 'Hey, you'll know when you know.' And I just knew that this was the time," he said.
Over the last 19 years, he noted, Lakeside has grown by over 800 students, or 900 students when considering the addition of the pre-K program.
"That's been a good growth and we've had lots of great employees and administrators, teachers, janitors, health care workers," he said. "I think of all of them, and they've all influenced me a lot. It's just been a team approach and I think that's why we've had the success we've had is because I think everybody really sees that there's not one person here more important than the other person."
Cook, who in 2018 was named Superintendent of the Year by the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, helped bring about much positive change for the district, including leading it out of fiscal distress, making it one of the Top 5 in the state for highest teacher pay, increasing advanced placement offerings from six to 22, and helping establish the Lakeside Legacy program that offers students over 60 hours of free college credit.
Of coming to Lakeside, he recalled he was going to church one night when Interim Superintendent Bob Evans called.
"He had come in to help Lakeside out and he said, 'Hey, somebody on the phone wants to talk to you.' And it was Steve Trusty and he told me they wanted me to come and interview at Lakeside. So I came over here and the rest is history, really. Been here now for 19 years and, man, I've been blessed. It's been such a blessing.
"I've been so fortunate to work with school board members that really care about the kids. All the board members I've worked with, really and truly, they get on for the right reasons and they care about our kids. They just want the best school possible. So it's been a pleasure working with all of them over the years," Cook said.
"There's been a lot of different ones in my 19 years but I can say that I had great relationships with all of them and they've really helped me to be a better leader. They helped to grow me over the years."
When asked what he looks forward to most in retirement, he said "really just having the flexibility in my schedule to be with my family."
"One of the goals I've had for a while -- I've done it very little in my life, mainly houses we've lived in and fixed up and sold, but we've been able to flip some of those along the way which has really helped us financially. And that's what I want to do in retirement. I want to, nothing aggressive, but just find a house to fix up, work on it at my own pace, and then sell it. And then use that money to do special things with my kids or my family," he said.
The school board will be meeting in the coming weeks, he said, to start the selection process for a new superintendent. He said it has been a great career for him.
"I mean, it really has," he said. "I've always loved my job. I loved teaching and coaching at Malvern, I loved working in administration at both Ouachita and Magnet and also at Lakeside. And my dad always used to tell me that. He was in the grocery business, he said that he never had to go to work because he loved his job. And I guess I just inherited that from him. I don't know, but I just I've always loved coming to work and I still do. And I really wanted to finish while I still really loved it."