FRANKLIN COUNTY — Two of the county’s newest principals are father and daughter.

This fall, Robert Gervais takes the lead at Montgomery Elementary School, while Julie Kittell steps up at Bakersfield Elementary School.

Both longtime educators and Franklin County natives, they are looking forward to their new roles as school leaders and colleagues in the Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union.

“It’s interesting how my father and I have intertwined our professional lives,” Kittell said. “We are very passionate about these communities, supporting them and making them better.”

The Messenger spoke with the father-daughter pair to learn more about their career paths and plans for the new school year. Here’s what they had to say.

Q: Why is education so important to your family?

Gervais: We come from a very athletic family, and I coached both my son and my daughter all through school and even into college, and no matter if it was athletics, music, whatever it was, we always taught them to put their best foot forward and always look to improve.

My dad was actually a farmer. Even though he didn’t go to college, he was always talking about how important it was to get an education … There were 15 of us in our family, and he put into his will that he wanted his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to have the opportunity to go to college. That has a lot to do with us being in education today.

Kittell: My father was a teacher when I was kid back in the ’90s. My parents encouraged me to do well in school and pointed out the importance of education. My dad and mom always said, ‘Oh, you’d be such a great teacher,’ and I was like, ‘No, no, no.’ And then lo and behold, after I graduated college, that’s the route that I took. It’s like it’s in my blood.

Q: What was your path to becoming a principal?

Kittell: In between college breaks, I subbed at some of the local schools, and then I was a para-educator for about a year and a half, and that made me realize I do like being in the education world.

I went back to school after my undergrad to become a teacher, and I was a middle school science teacher for about 11 years. Toward the end of that span, I started taking on more leadership roles and really getting interested in that.

[Before I had my daughter], I was principal at Enosburg Middle School, which I loved, and I felt like that’s what my next calling was.

Bakersfield was always one of those schools I had my eye on. It’s a cute small school, very community supported.

Gervais: I graduated from Johnson State, and I taught math and science. I’m a lifelong softball and basketball coach, so naturally, teaching and leadership were aspects of that.

Later, I got into technology mostly because I was the guy who was fixing computers. I worked at Johnson State as an educational technology coordinator, Missisquoi and FNESU districts, both as directors, and then back in Enosburg as a tech integration teacher.

I was actually working at Enosburg when Julie was the middle school principal, and I saw what she did, and how when she left, her teachers felt that loss. She impacted their day-to-day lives, and I wanted to have that same impact on teachers.

Q: What is an initiative or project you are looking forward to this year?

Kittell: When I was hired, my teachers talked about how they were really excited about their progress in reading last year, so they wanted to do something similar for writing. We are starting to plan a bunch of writing-specific activities throughout the school year. We’ll be doing grade-level pen pals and encouraging students to participate in some of the Vermont state-level writing challenges.

We’re also going to be starting community meetings. We’re going to start with some celebrations, bringing our families in and sharing our success. Eventually, I would like to hand that over to kids to really plan out what they’d like the meeting to look like.

Gervais: It’s super important to make things with student ownership baked into it. One of my projects, is re-designing Montgomery’s code of character. It includes seven traits, but they are still from a handbook and came from educators years past.

Eighth-grade students are now going to pick the characteristics or traits that make them successful, make them leaders. And we’re building a wall that we’ll call the Montgomery Elementary School Pyramid of Success and Leadership. Each of the eighth-graders will also share those traits with younger students throughout the year through podcasts or videos. The key thing there is that they are becoming owners of that leadership.