Educators close the books: retiring school employees look back on their careers

Before he retired last week, Tom Hall could look at his colleagues in the Roanoke County Public Schools and see very few people who, like him, had been around for decades.

Hall would know. For the past decade, he's been in charge of personnel for the school system.

"There's 1,200 teachers and in my 10 years, 11 years in my position, I've pretty much replaced all but 200," said Hall, a 37-year school system veteran. "A lot of them were my age and they're retiring."

For decades, the country's teaching ranks were filled with people born shortly after World War II, the so-called baby boomers. Now many of those people are retiring and being replaced by younger teachers and administrators.

A report released in April by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future found that more than half of the country's teachers could retire within the next 10 years, causing a "tsunami" of teacher turnover. In Virginia, the report says, 47 percent of teachers are over 50.

In Roanoke and Roanoke County, several hundred of those baby boomers retired June 30. Below are the stories of four longtime educators.

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