When he first entered the Westbrook schools as a kindergarten student in 1955, Mike Kane had no way of knowing that 50 years later he would still be a part of the school system.

Kane, 55, announced his retirement last Friday after 33 years as an employee of the Westbrook School Department, the last nine years as assistant superintendent of schools.

While he said the decision to retire has been difficult, he doesn’t regret it. “The time’s right,” he said. “The hard part for me is that it’s been my life. It’s connected, it’s like a family.”

Kane doesn’t plan to sit idle in retirement. He has two daughters living in Europe, one in Germany and one in England, and he wants to visit them. He will also continue to run his Scarborough horse farm, Kane Country Farms, with his wife, who also retired recently.

Despite his plans to stay busy, Kane said leaving the Westbrook schools, where he has been a student, teacher and administrator for most of his life has been hard on him.

Superintendent Stan Sawyer said Kane would be missed. “Mike has been a very dedicated employee here in Westbrook,” Sawyer said. “He has given his time and expertise to contribute unselfishly to make the Westbrook school system the outstanding school system it is today.”

Kane graduated from the high school vocational program in 1968. When he left the school, he had his career path set in his mind. “When I left school, my goal was to be an auto mechanic, that’s what I wanted to be,” he said. “But a couple of interesting things happened along the way.”

After high school, Kane went to Southern Maine Technical College on a Rotary Club scholarship. After two years at college, Kane achieved the goal he set for himself and began work as an auto mechanic at Forest City Chevrolet in Portland. He was promoted to shop foreman after just a year as a mechanic, at which point he thought he was settled into a career, until fate intervened to bring him back to Westbrook.

Kane was working at Forest City one day in 1971 when Richard Duntley, the director of the Westbrook Regional Vocational Center, came into the shop and asked him to interview for the position of automotive teacher at the vocational center.

The possibility of returning to his old high school as a teacher intrigued Kane, and he talked it over with his wife, who said she thought it would be nice for him to have summers off.

“Needless to say, I found out you had to work summers as a beginning teacher to make money,” he said with a smile. To supplement his income as a new teacher, Kane worked several summers at Forest City covering shifts while other employees were on vacation.

Eventually, Kane moved up high enough on the salary ladder to allow him to take summers off, and he taught automotive classes at the vocational center until 1987 when he was tapped to become the assistant director of the vocational center.

Once he became an administrator, Kane said one challenge he faced was attracting more students to the vocational programs. “We were seeing the enrollment in the vocational school drop,” he said.

Kane said he worked to help implement programs to raise interest in the vocational center and also to “raise the self-esteem of who vocational students were.”

One of the programs Kane started was the first-ever vocational graduation night. Prior to that, vocational students had participated in the graduation ceremony for the rest of the high school. “That went over very big,” he said.

He said he also brought in a chapter of the National Vocational Honors Society, which is now known as the National Technical Honors Society. “Those were the things that I tried to do,” Kane said. “Bring that self-esteem level (up) so you had a tremendous amount of pride.”

Kane said he also worked hard to start a program that combined college prep with the vocational program. “Even today, Westbrook has an unusual ratio of college prep students in the vocational programs,” he said. At times, Kane said about 30 to 35 percent of Westbrook vocational students are taking college prep courses, which is higher than the average of other area vocational schools.

In 1992, Kane was promoted from assistant director to director of the vocational center. Kane said that when he was director from 1992 to 1996, the vocational center added its successful commercial truck driving and computer repair programs to its program.

In 1996, Kane’s career got another boost when he was named assistant superintendent of schools. When asked how an auto mechanic managed to make it all the way to assistant superintendent, Kane laughed and offered a simple explanation. “When somebody asks how an automotive guy ends up being assistant superintendent of schools, what I say to them is that they’re both troubleshooting jobs,” said Kane.

Kidding aside, Kane said that during his time as both a teacher and administrator at the vocational center, he was also going to school to advance his education. “What happened was in the process of being the auto instructor, I still wanted to go to school,” he said.

Kane enrolled at what is now the University of Southern Maine in Gorham in an evening program. He initially went there to get a degree in vocational education. But once he got that degree, he still wanted to learn.

“I decided my next degree would be a degree in administration,” said Kane, who eventually got a master’s degree in educational administration.

Once he was named assistant superintendent, Kane said he needed to quickly get acclimated to the job. “I immediately got an education on elementary education,” he said. “All my background had been in secondary education”

In addition, Kane also used his background in construction to help spearhead several major school construction projects during his tenure. During that time, the school department added a new vocational center building and the new music annex at the high school, as well as renovation projects at Congin and Canal schools. Kane said managing those construction projects was especially meaningful to him.

Though he’s retiring, Kane said he doesn’t want to sever his ties with the Westbrook schools. With the possibility of a new middle school project on the horizon, Kane said he wants to be involved in some way. He said he would like to act as a clerk of the works for the middle school project, supervising all aspects of the construction.

Sawyer said he would like to see Kane have some role on the new middle school project. “It’s my hope that even though he’s retiring, he’ll have a key role in the construction and renovation of Wescott Junior High School,” Sawyer said.

Kane said he has told Sawyer about his interest in staying on to help with the middle school project. “I would love to be able to concentrate on that job,” he said. “I would not want to be assistant superintendent of schools and also have to manage the middle school construction. I’d love to do that, whether or not they want me to.”

When asked about his favorite moments with the school department, Kane said he would always remember the students and their achievements. “The easiest thing is to pick out any time I see success with Westbrook kids no matter what level it’s at,” he said. “Whether it’s the band becoming the No. 1 band, whether it’s the art kids getting an art show into a museum, or the sports teams finishing in first place, those are always moments you remember.”

Sawyer said he would miss Kane personally as well as professionally. “Over the last six years, I’ve relied on him extensively,” Sawyer said. “He’ll be greatly missed as the assistant superintendent. But most of all, he’ll be missed by me as a great friend and a peer.”

When asked what he would miss the most, Kane said it would definitely be the kids.

“Kids keep me young,” he said. “What you’ve got to remember is that every year you go back, the (kid’s) ages stay the same. They never get old. You get old, but you don’t notice because nobody around you is getting old. Their energy is tremendous, and it gives you extra energy. I’ll miss it, there’s no question.”

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