Oliphant ready for retirement, again

A glass paperweight sits on Patricia Oliphant's desk inscribed with the Sir Walter Scott quote, “The will to do, the soul to dare.”

Oliphant's former colleagues in the Indian River School District gave her the gift years before she became director of Sussex Academy. That was a few years before her first retirement. On June 30, 2018, Oliphant will officially retire for a second time.

“I'm enormously grateful for every opportunity. God has been good to me,” she said.

Oliphant tears up recalling a conversation she had with a former secretary who once told Oliphant that she is energized by creating and starting something, but not as interested in maintaining it.

“I have been energized by new initiatives and change,” she said. “I must like the challenge.”

Oliphant has been with Sussex Academy since 2002, when she came on part time after her first retirement. She worked for the Indian River School District for 25 years, starting as a teacher in 1967 and then moving into administration. In the early 1990s – with a master's degree and a doctorate – she went to Woodbridge as principal.

Leaving Indian River, where she had once been a student, and later a teacher and administrator, was hard.

“But it let me see and forced me to view other schools and people, and experience how other people did things,” she said. “I wanted to see if I could do the same somewhere else.”

Oliphant said she loved working with students and teachers at the school, but retirement called early –after two years at Woodbridge – and she took the opportunity.

She stayed busy working for the Delaware State Education Association, Wilmington University and the University of Delaware. But when she had a chance to work with a new charter school in Georgetown, the concept piqued her interest.

“Kids in Sussex County need a choice. My thinking was evolving about schools,” she said. “It's about giving kids choices.”

Sussex Academy, which started as a grades 6-8 school in west Georgetown, before expanding into a sixth- through 12th-grade facility off Route 9 east of Georgetown, is Sussex County's only charter school. Students consistently earn high marks in state testing, outpacing traditional schools in the area. Expeditionary learning – a philosophy of learning by doing along with operating a school – is at the root of the school's success, she said.

Oliphant credits the school's original founders and excellent teachers with pioneering an outstanding educational concept.

“The success of the school is on the shoulders of the teachers,” she said. “They had this idea for what this charter school should be for middle school students.”

Sussex Academy is now advertising for a director position – big shoes to fill despite Oliphant's petite stature.

The Lewes resident said she is not sure what she's going to do in retirement this time. Probably more traveling with her husband of 53 years, or their two children, or four grandchildren.

But one thing's for sure: she'll find something, and when she does she'll sink her teeth into it.

“Sometimes I'm a lightning rod,” she said. “I'm a person who looks over the edge and pushes the envelope.”