NORTH ANDOVER - Interim Superintendent Daniel O'Connor expressed some anxiety , and with good reason.

Friday was the last day for payroll coordinator Kate Sheppard. Athletic Director Frank Millerick is leaving before April 1. Business Manager Paul Szymanksi is considering an offer from another town that he could accept in a matter of weeks. Assistant Superintendent Richard Bergeron is retiring at the end of the year. Principal Nancy Jukins is also retiring at the end of the year. And O'Connor himself was only hired on for the year.

"The first thing I'm going to order be done is the flag at every school hang upside down, the international distress signal," O'Connor said.

He expects more resignations and retirements before the year is out, leaving the schools with a lot of hiring, and a lot of training to do.

O'Connor said the extra work most people have taken on as the budget has been cut over the past few years is a factor in some of the resignations. The School Department made more than $3 million in budget cuts last year, including any pay raises for administrators and cutting some administrative positions entirely.

"This is a direct result of cutbacks," O'Connor said. "If you cut a job with two people down to one person, they will do the work for a period of time."

Dealing with the cuts

Szymanski is in contract negotiations with the Hamilton-Wenham Regional School District to be the superintendent for finance and administration, similar to his current job. With him he will take 14 years of history and knowledge of North Andover schools, including all the building projects done during his time.

"It has everything to do with what direction our school system may be going in," he said. "At the next Town Meeting our school committee might need to make difficult decisions, and I am on a one-year contract. I have to give serious consideration to my family and career."

Szymanski said that many in the school administration have worked hard behind the scenes to keep the school system running and keep things focused on kids. He said both he and Bergeron took on many new responsibilities after the resignation of former Superintendent Harry Harutunian last spring.

Szymanski said he has worked hard to make good relationships with other town departments and to gain the trust of those he has worked with.

"Even with the former administration, my personal relationships and trust were never compromised or tainted," he said.

He said the frustration has been mounting for many who work with the schools because there is not enough money to fund the programs they want to put in place to help students improve and to support teachers and other staff.

Bergeron is familiar with those frustrations.

He was originally hired in the summer of 2005 to help with curriculum, but he found that many of the projects he worked on with teachers were dropped once Harutunian resigned and budget problems hit their high point.

He said a committee working on science curriculum has been meeting for two years and is ready to make a presentation, but he doesn't know if any money is available to make the changes.

He is retiring from Massachusetts schools, but hasn't ruled out taking on a job somewhere else if the position fits.

"What I'd like to be doing is to work in a district that isn't in crisis mode," he said. "It is consistently stressful. We've tried our best."

Both Szymanski and Bergeron said the staff and teachers work amazingly hard and students are still achieving, a sign that nobody is giving up on the school system.

"We continue to give 100 percent," Szymanski said.

An opportunity in the transition

School committee members said they are concerned people are leaving, but they also view the transition as a time to restructure the roles of people in the school office and give the new superintendent a chance to hire his own people.

"We need to rethink the roles of the top administrators," school committee member Charles Ormsby said. "We desperately need a senior administrator focused exclusively on the budget and financial management, and we need a superintendent to be focused on academic excellence."

Ormsby said the problem is not the number of people, but how the duties are divided.

Still, he said, everyone leaving at the same time is going to be a hit.

"It's going to be a difficult transition to do it all at once," he said.

School Committee member William Kelly said he is concerned about others he has heard who might be leaving, but he can understand the pressure of more work and weakened morale.

"The financial support of the school system appears to not be assured," he said. "If they can go somewhere else and be more secure, I don't blame them."

He said for some jobs, such as Szymanski's role, the committee plans to bring in people short-term and let the new superintendent do some hiring. For the athletic director's role, he thinks the school system could get by without hiring someone for this year, although last year's director, Jack Stephenson, has agreed to step in for the interim.

"If our budget request isn't funded fully, we are going have to be looking at changes," Kelly said. "Athletics is going to be on the table."

School Committee member Barbara Whidden said she is holding out hope that no more choose to leave.

"You lose all of that past history," she said. "You lose people who follow the budget process and Town Meeting who know the community."

She said the key will be finding experienced people willing to take on important roles on a temporary basis.

The $4.7 million additional budget request from the School Department does not include any cuts and does ask that all the positions cut last year be restored.

But the budget also does not include any additions to the Central Office.

"Hopefully the new superintendent can look at the organization and give a plan that will work in the Central Office," she said.

O'Connor said other school districts know the quality of workers in the North Andover school district, and they will reach out to tempt some into leaving.

He said the town needs to work at resolving some of the budget issues facing the schools.

"Right now, we are working about as hard as we can," he said.