After 32 years at Morganton Day School, Dr. Melanie Mikusa retires next July

Children greeted Melanie Mikusa left and right as Morganton Day School’s head of school walked through the playground, running up to her with a familiarity only earned by hands-on involvement.

Each day, Dr. Mikusa greets students as they enter the school. She knows them by name and asks them about their days and their interests.

“Are you picking up trash during recess?” Mikusa asked one girl. “Great job!”

Walking away from the playground, Mikusa said she thinks it’s important to acknowledge when students do things like that.

And Mikusa hopes that, after she retires next year, students will remember her as someone who genuinely cared about them.

Earlier this month, Morganton Day School announced Mikusa’s upcoming retirement. Her last day will be on July 31, 2027, giving the school ample time to find and train a new head of school before Mikusa’s departure.

Leading up to that day though, one of Mikusa’s goals is to keep the school on the solid foundation she has helped build over the last 18 years, having navigated the school through the financial crisis of 2008 and come out the other side with a curriculum that has continued to grow.

“The thread that you’ll hear through all of this is community,” Mikusa said. “Our parents are so involved in the school. The school was founded by a group of parents, and we’ve stayed with that ethos all the way along in terms of the importance of parent, student, teacher.”

Mikusa said they call it the three-legged stool of education, and it was those three groups coming together that pulled Morganton Day School through difficult times.

One of her ideas to keep the school strong is engaging with alumni and bringing them back — something that is already happening to some degree.

“Since I’ve been here so long, what’s really exciting is … parents here that I taught (years ago) now have their children here,” Mikusa said. “It’s so cool to have a student that I taught in Kindergarten and first grade now here with their children.”

Before she was head of school, Mikusa was a teacher between about 1994 and 2006. She left briefly to gain administrative experience, hoping to someday become head of school.

When she took on the role in 2008, she immediately faced a bumpy road to the school’s financial security.

It was the most difficult era in her career, she said.

“Because I knew that this type of education is so invaluable … and to have what we have here in Burke County, the idea we might lose (it) just made me work harder,” Mikusa said.

Morganton Day School is an International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme. This type of schooling emphasizes the importance of curiosity, collaboration with others, open-mindedness, and critical thinking among other qualities listed in the 10 attributes of its learner profile.

The community came together for a fundraising campaign that ultimately pulled the school out of a bad financial situation, Mikusa said.

It’s come a long way overall during Mikusa’s tenure, but now, she wants the freedom to travel and visit her daughter – and enjoy some “unstructured time.”

“I’ve lived by a school calendar for a lot of years,” Mikusa said. “We laugh and say I’m finally graduating.”

The decision to retire actually came several years ago, Mikusa said, shortly after her husband’s death.

“The idea that I’m still healthy and want to be able to travel and go see (our daughter) whenever I want came crashing down when I lost my husband,” Mikusa said. “And I signed a contract three years ago. My contracts are three years and I said, ‘You know, I think this is really going to be it.’”

Mikusa said it is a blessing that she loves her job and doesn’t wake up dreading the day.

“I’ve gotten the sense of family, the sense of community, a sense of accomplishment that is just beyond compare,” Mikusa said. She said it has filled her with joy to watch students grow up to be thriving, successful adults who are movers and shakers in their communities.

The hardest thing to leave behind, Mikusa said, will be the relationships.

“It’s going to be the children. It’s going to be the teachers, and the families. It’s going to be hard,” She said, her eyes getting watery. “That’s why I try not to think about that, yet.”

Already, it’s been a rollercoaster of emotions, Mikusa said.

“My life has been right here for 32 years, so there have been times when I was like, ‘Whoa, what have I done?’” Mikusa said. “And then the flip side of that is I’ve done a lot and it’s time to pass the torch.”