Paquette retires from North Port High School
SUN PHOTO BY ELAINE ALLEN-EMRICH, eallen@sun-herald.com
Paul Paquette, an assistant principal at North Port High School, shows off a scroll that was read about his success at NPHS. Paquette, one of the original educators hired at NPHS in 1999, retired Thursday.
NORTH PORT — Sitting in a half-finished North Port High School in 1999, wearing a hard hat, assistant principal Paul Paquette gazed at the trees in the distance. He envisioned the window he would look out of at his office at NPHS for many years to come.
Hired months before North Port’s first high school opened, Paquette learned how to read blueprints, answered questions from the public about the academy-style learning proposed for students, and unloaded hundreds of boxes of books.