Henry Duval Leaving Hoosac Valley After 12 Years

CHESHIRE, Mass. — After 12 years, Henry Duval is trading his Hurricane red for General purple.

Duval was Hoosac Valley High School's assistant principal for three years before being promoted and spending eight years as principal. Last year he went back to an assistant principal role.

On Aug. 1, he will begin his new job at Pittsfield High School as assistant principal — a position more in line with his desires to be work with high school age students.

"I don't see myself as running away from this place. You just reach a point in your mind when it is time for a change and I've reached that point," Duval said on Thursday in his office still decorated with photos of Hoosac Valley sports teams winning championships and students that particularly stood out.

After graduating from Hoosac Valley Duval went off to earn his bachelors' degree in history from Arizona State and then his master's degree in teaching from the University of Minnesota. He moved back to the county in 1995 and taught social studies at Taconic High School for six years.

Then, he got the chance he had been hoping to get.

"When I went into teaching it was one of those things in my mind that I would like to teach at my old school. But instead of teaching, I came back as an administrator," Duval said.

Three years later he was promoted to principal but more and more that job took him away from the students. Five years ago the district closed the Adams Memorial Middle School, adding two more grade levels under Duval's leadership.

"As the school got bigger, when I took over the 7th and 8th grade, we took over 230 more students and 25 more staff. I found myself being further and further removed from the students and I got into this to work with students," Duval said. "I became much more the manager of the building and the operation as opposed to interacting with the students."

Shortly after that school closed, the state approved renovating Hoosac Valley and Duval was looked on to make decisions that affected the day-to-day operations of the school.

"I was dealing with much more of the day-to-day operation of the building, as how it is it going to run when it opens, down to the minutiae of choosing the door handles, numbering the classrooms," he said.

He recalls spending six hours in a meeting with Building Committee Chairman Howard Wineberg picking out hardware. The building project had taken over the majority of Duval's efforts, working nights and weekends as the district tried to finish the project in just one school year.

"That was certainly the biggest time commitment. It occupied all of my mine," he said, calling it the biggest challenge he faced in his 12 years with the district.

Duval said he made it clear that this was his last year with the school and the year was spent partly helping the transition to a new administration and partly completing the building project.

"It was good for me to get back working with students more directly than I have had the chance to in the last several years. But it was different to work with sixth-graders. That was interesting and a challenge," he said. "My strength is more toward the high school and I have more experience. I was a high school teacher and then a high school assistant principal and principal for many years."

PHS gives him the opportunity to not only work with students again, but strictly high school students. But on July 31, when those pictures are removed and his office walls are bare, it will be difficult for him to leave the keys on the desk and walk away.

"This place is in my blood. I've devoted so much time in 12 years but beyond that, the culture here is very much a part of me and that will be very hard to leave behind," Duval said.

Now he is getting all of the jobs he took on and headed — such as being a lead role in organizing graduation — and putting them all on paper, making sure that someone else will be taking over and doing them just right in keeping the traditions alive without him.

"I am so busy now that there is no time for it to sink in," he said.

When he does take his new job, the first thing he will need to do is focus on learning "PHS culture."

"I've been immersed in Hoosac Valley culture for so long, it is going to be important for me to step back and make sure to keep reminding myself that just because that is the way we did it at Hoosac Valley, doesn't mean we do it at Pittsfield High," he said.

But Duval still has a closet full of red shirts, so don't be surprised if a familiar face continues to attend sporting games and other school events.

"I am sad to leave here but I am excited about the challenges that lay ahead," he said. "I'm a phone call away if they need me."

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