The longtime principal of Dudley Elementary School has announced her retirement at the end of the 2020-21 school year. Karen Fingar has worked in the Fairport Central School District for 15 years. She began at Dudley in 2006 as an assistant principal, and accepted the position of principal in 2008. 

Fingar’s career in education began 33 years ago in the Honeoye Central School District, where she taught for 18 years at the K-5 level. Fingar said her experience at Honeoye helped prepare her for an administrative role, and that she always knew that any administration role she took would be at the elementary level, where she had spent her teaching career. 

“I always make sure that when I make decisions, I try to keep kids, and what’s best for kids, central to my decision-making,” Fingar said. “When something feels difficult, that’s what I go back to: what is best for the kids?”

Of her time at Dudley, she says, “This building has been an absolute gift…I am able to stay connected with the kids.” She said she has valued the opportunity to be with young learners at the very beginning of their education careers. When asked what she loves the most about the Dudley community, she said, “It’s about relationships and connection. We don’t have anything if we don’t have connection.”

Fingar said she has had the good fortune to work alongside “some of the most talented, dedicated educators” in the staff at Dudley. “The children are front and center, but you don’t have what you have with the children without the administrators and staff who you work with every day,” Fingar said. 

Fingar said she and her husband plan to travel when they can, and she is considering other opportunities down the road. She said that her 15 years in Fairport are difficult to boil down to a single memory or even several.

“How lucky I am! To have been able to enjoy a career in education that makes leaving it so hard! I am blessed,” she said.