Mary Rubadeau
By Karen Bellerose

George Bernard Shaw has been oft quoted in the paradoxical truism, “Liberty means responsibility.” Growing up on a dairy farm with a longing for adventure has woven this truth into the fiber of Mary Rubadeau. At once Telluride Schools superintendent and sailor, mother and world traveler, pet person and athlete, Rubadeau knows that life is a cocktail of tethered commitments and unfettered exploration.

Even cattle ranchers sigh compassionately for the relentless nature of life on a dairy farm. Rubadeau grew up in such environs near Syracuse, New York, among three sisters and a brother, with copious chores to mark each day’s beginning and end. She managed to become an accomplished equestrian, a passion that has resurfaced since her move to Telluride eight years ago. She went on to achieve more personal and professional milestones: college, teaching, a master’s degree, triathlons, dog mushing and skiing.

These accomplishments are interspersed with enviable adventures: studying abroad in Vienna, Austria; traveling around the world; teaching in Australia; sailing down the Atlantic coast and around the Bahamas; moving sight unseen to a rural Alaskan village. It appears that Rubadeau has crafted the elusive balanced life. “I have always had a passion for travel and trying to combine things, like academics abroad,” she says. “It was key, finding my husband, best friend and traveling partner, Bob—he makes it all possible…. He worked part-time when the kids were young, and if I had to travel, he would hold down the fort.”

A committed mother to Tristan and Skye and grandmother to Madeline and Merrick (with a third on the way), Rubadeau’s love of children does not stop with her own family. She has progressed through the school system from teaching to working in special education to being a superintendent with several innovations to her credit. Faced with eclectic communities and cultures in the Alaskan school system, she developed the Individual Mission and Assessment Plan, an approach to education that was crucial for the success of Alaska’s diverse student population. She has found that it transfers to small districts with similar mixed demographics, such as Telluride. “I brought with me a sense of connecting the school and the community, because like Juneau, Telluride is a quirky place with diverse groups of people where land is at a premium, so multiple-use facilities make sense and augment opportunities for the school and community.”

Early in her Telluride tenure, Rubadeau was successful in navigating the notoriously scrutinizing political waters of Telluride to get the Palm Theatre built on the high-school campus. An elaborate facility with a fly tower, the theater is state of the art and widely used.

Her career in the Alaskan education system began in the remote coastal village of Unalakleet, where her family’s lifestyle embraced wild reindeer herds and mushing sled dogs. As their children grew older, the Rubadeaus moved to more desirable school systems—first to the Kenai Peninsula and then to Juneau. Seeking a change, Rubadeau applied to Telluride’s ad for a superintendent in 1999. Rubadeau has fit nicely into Telluride’s community, largely because she knows the secret to high-profile jobs in small towns.

“The key element to successful leadership is relationships,” she says. “It’s important to me to connect with the people and students of the community and make decisions that best serve their needs. When superintendents think of their accomplishments, it isn’t about bricks and mortar. It’s about how successful our kids are each year—that’s my litmus test.”

While at the helm of Telluride education, Rubadeau has enhanced the district with programs inspired by those relationships. Along with former Telluride teacher Melinda Giampetro, she has created a student leadership program in collaboration with the Colorado Association of School Boards. “The underlying agenda for the program is to promote political activism from our youth,” she says. The statistics on how many citizens in the United States do not vote, especially young people, is alarming, and the only way to change that is through education.

Her life of achievement and adventure has not been without pain: She recently lost a nephew to the war in Iraq, and Telluride youth’s drug and alcohol problem hit her personally when her son survived a serious, alcohol-related accident. Meeting the issue head-on, she secured an initiatives grant from the Telluride Education Foundation to fund a three-year salary for a drug and alcohol counselor for Telluride and Norwood.

Rubadeau now faces the challenge of finding a new school site for the region’s ever-expanding student population. With the community’s growing ethnic diversity, she is committed to preventing the educational gap by making preschool and early childhood education widely available and affordable in the future.

Meanwhile, she rides her mare on Wilson Mesa, jets off to Alaska and continues a 20-plus-years family tradition of sailing adventures. “We make a real commitment to be together on our sailboat, Dogstar, each summer and have come to know each other well. Now the grandkids join us, too. It’s spectacular.”