Three Redland Elementary educators retire after decades of service

Three veteran Redland Elementary educators are leaving at the same time, and the loss is bigger than a farewell photo. Instructional Coach Nacole Baxley, speech pathologist Andreda Young and first-grade teacher Anita McGowin all retired after decades in Elmore County, taking with them the kind of classroom memory that shapes how a school handles student growth, family concerns and staff support.

Baxley spent the last 10 years as Redland’s instructional coach at 495 Scholars Drive in Wetumpka, helping teachers sharpen lessons and build confidence in the classroom. She said the most rewarding part of the job was watching that confidence carry over to students. Her work mattered in a school serving about 725 PK-6 students with 37 classroom teachers, where day-to-day guidance can affect everything from reading groups to classroom culture.

Young’s departure removes even longer institutional knowledge. She worked 39 years as a speech pathologist, including 37 years in Elmore County, and her career centered on helping children communicate more clearly and build self-worth. She said it was rewarding to see speech progress and then hear from parents years later about the lasting impact on their children, a reminder that speech services often reach far beyond a single school year.

McGowin spent 26 years teaching first grade, where the changes from August to May can be dramatic. She said students often grow so much in that one year that it can feel like several years of development compressed into a single classroom. For a school that depends on early literacy and foundational skills, that kind of long view is not easy to replace when a veteran teacher walks out the door.

Principal Cory Eckstein said the three retirees leave behind a legacy that cannot be replaced. That concern lands at a school that opened in 2009 as Redland grew rapidly, after local leaders expanded roads and infrastructure for what was expected to become an 800-plus-student campus. Today, Redland Elementary remains a major part of Elmore County Public Schools, which serves more than 11,000 students across 17 accredited campuses and a technical center.

The coming school year will test how much of Baxley, Young and McGowin’s influence can be carried forward by the rest of the staff, including Eckstein and assistant principal Spencer Wade. Redland’s fourth annual Living Wax Museum, held Feb. 27 and featuring 15 fourth-grade students, showed the school still has a strong culture of family engagement. The challenge now is preserving that steadiness while three of the educators who helped build it step aside.