“Mrs. Meehan” are two words synonymous with Fountain Hills Unified School District No. 98 and the generations positively impacted by the long-time educator.

While some may still find it difficult to believe, Mrs. Meehan (known by Joanne to only a few non-students) is officially retiring.

It will be a strange sight indeed when school starts again in early August and Mrs. Meehan won’t be there to greet young students and parents alike.

During a recent interview, she was asked if she could “turn off” the education side of her as of July 1.

Her husband Don, a retired school principal himself, half-jokingly replied on her behalf, “I think I’m condemned to live with it forever…

“I’ve been saying all along the gal hasn’t been married to me for 30 years, she’s been married to the School District.”

Kidding aside, the Meehans worked hard through the decades to separate work and their personal lives.

“It’s always been an unofficial thing at the end of the day when she comes home that we spend maybe 10 minutes talking about the highlights of the day and then we block it out,” Don Meehan said.

Joanne has been involved with education for 45 years.

“I started out as a teacher,” she recalls. “I always knew I was going to be in education.”

She obtained a degree in elementary education and earned her master’s degree from Penn State. She also obtained a second master’s in administration from Cheney State University.

After college she started out as a first grade teacher, graduated to the third grade and eventually landed a teaching job in high school.

She was then recruited to be a trainer and mentor for other teachers.

Eventually the Meehans migrated in 1983 from Pennsylvania to Fountain Hills, where she became the principal of the town’s only school, then named Fountain Hills Elementary School and home to kindergarten through eighth grade.

Local high schoolers at the time were bussed to Coronado High School in south Scottsdale.

Significant growth hit the community, however, and during her 13 years at the facility the long-time administrator had to deal with many growing pains.

“We were conducting classes on the stage, in the hallways,” she recalls.

“We had portable classrooms outside in trailers. I sent the janitor out there over the summer to shampoo the carpeting and the whole thing went through the floor…the portables were used. We bought them from Scottsdale.”

The current McDowell Mountain Elementary School was eventually built, helping split up the grades and the growing student enrollment.

After 13 years at the facility now called Four Peaks, Meehan was transferred to McDowell Mountain, where she has worked for the past 17 years.

As pointed out in a recent letter to the editor by Walt Dunne, a retired FHUSD superintendent who lives here, Meehan the past three decades has worked with seven superintendents, more than 100 Governing Board members, more than 500 teachers and staff members and literally thousands of parents and students.

“I had students come through who now live here and have kids of their own enrolled in the district,” she says.

The best part of education?

“Kids and teachers and my parents,” she responds. “I worked, what, half a year in the district office? I couldn’t stand it. You don’t have that interaction. It’s not Christmas. It’s not Easter. Kids and holidays….

“Just interacting with the kids is the best part. I always have a funny story to bring home. Kids – they brighten your life and keep you young.”

And the worst part of education?

After a slight pause, she responds, “Lawyers.”

“That’s just not the fun part,” she adds. “When you have to record everything...that’s not my thing.”

Over the generations, Meehan feels kids will always be kids: “They want to learn.”

Have parents changed?

“I’ve always said, and my teachers have said, they are our teammates, our partners,” she says.

“We do many things to support them. I welcomed them into my schools. And they’re eager to help, get involved.

“But these days you see a lot more parents having to work. More moms have to work. So we work around that. That’s just economics anymore.”

With 45 years of education under her belt, however, some of the biggest changes have revolved around technology and student testing.

“I think technology has really helped,” she quickly adds.

“It’s not putting a kid on a computer and working through programs. No. It’s opening up a new world for them. Another tool. It’s fantastic.”

Meehan has remained steadfast with the basics, however, always pushing handwriting and starting with the fundamentals.

“We’re still big on handwriting,” she says. “I’m old school that way. That’s like asking a baby to start running before they walk. There are some logical developmental things that have to happen.”

Meehan is not opposed to modern-day standardized testing and more accountability in the classrooms, but she also says that sometimes testing can be over-emphasized.

“For the entire month of April that’s all we did was test,” she says. “What are we doing to children? It’s one snapshot of the total child. I have kids who throw up and get upset about tests. They can’t take tests.

“I lean more toward the track record, the total portfolio. There is no way to measure creativity, for example.

“With new standards coming out, I think it’s good, it’s higher level thinking, but you just don’t introduce it in one year. You phase it in, build up your curriculum to that.”

Meehan feels the current trend with declining student enrollment in Fountain Hills will reverse itself.

“We’re such a young town, people can’t fathom that,” she says. “That’s normal attrition. It happens in every community. It’s expensive to raise kids and live here. The recession didn’t help, either.

“There will be a surge of young families coming in again. It’s evolutionary. It will come back.”

Meehan was part of the hiring process that brought Tom and Linda Lawrence to Fountain Hills. She interviewed them by phone at the time. Meehan’s replacement was hired via on interview on Skype, showing how technology has changed in 20 years.

Linda is a kindergarten teacher at MMES, while Tom is FHUSD’s superintendent.

“I have a lot of confidence in the leadership and the people we have here,” she says, which includes administration and the School Board.

So now what?

“I’m gonna play,” she says with a laugh. “I never had a summer off. We’re going to go on a cruise to Alaska. I have things lined up every month. There are so many home projects I’ve put off for years. You’ll probably see me more than ever.”

Meehan has always been involved with the community outside of the district – Noon Kiwanis, Community Foundation, Salvation Army and more – and she intends to stay active.

And try to relax.

“It was time to retire,” she says. “I’m not getting any younger. So that’s my life. Pretty cut and dried. Boring.”

Yet for the thousands of students, parents and teachers she has impacted over the decades, life is anything but boring and her legacy will live on.

And in honor of Meehan’s accomplishments, dedication and leadership, the School Board recently voted to dedicate the FHUSD Learning Center in her name.

With her entire adult life devoted to the learning field, it is only appropriate that a Learning Center be named in her honor.