The Albert Lea School district is losing 22 seasoned teachers and staff members to retirement this spring.

&uot;I’ve been working in the district for 34 years,&uot; Dianne Distad, a fourth-grade teacher at Halvorsen, said. &uot;I’m going to miss my relationships with the staff and students.&uot;

But the school says the retirees are the ones who will be missed.

&uot;I’ll miss their leadership,&uot; Del Stein, principal of Halvorsen Elementary school, said.

Stein is parting with three teachers. &uot;They have been such positive role models for young teachers. With their experience and level of expertise, that leadership quality gets to be built in. They’ll be very hard to replace.&uot;

Thursday afternoon, the district held a tea and luncheon for all the retirees. For the tea, people lined up through the halls at Riverland Community College to shake hands with the teaching veterans.

Superintendent Dave Prescott said last week that the district is losing a group of extremely talented teachers. He said hiring to fill those shoes isn’t easy.

Doing the important behind-the-scenes work are the maintenance staff. Duaine Jacobsen has been at Brookside and the old Ramsey school for the last 10 years. He’d worked at the Farmstead/Wilson plant for that 30 years prior to that.

&uot;There was always something to fix,&uot; he said about why he enjoyed working in the district. &uot;I also really enjoyed the people I worked with.&uot;

Jacobsen said he plans on spending more time at his cabin near Spooner, Wis., where he can fish and relax. He said he might even winterize it and move there full time.

Many teachers just can’t give up the profession entirely.

For Bob Rowe, a long-time math teacher in the district, it’s a matter of easing out.

&uot;I’ll be teaching a few courses next spring at Riverland Community College in Austin,&uot; he said.

It seems like many would go on forever if they could.

&uot;I love what I do, but I just got old,&uot; Rowe smiled. &uot;I’ll really miss the kids and the people I work with.&uot;

For many, it wasn’t easy to make the decision, but it had to come sometime.

&uot;It’s bittersweet,&uot; said Don Gross, a fifth-grade teacher who taught at both Lakeview and Hawthorne for a combined 34 years. &uot;I’ll miss the fact that every day when I walk through that classroom door, there are 20 some kids waiting there. I had to be prepared, I had to be on. They were waiting for me, anticipating. That’s been my life for 34 years. I’ll miss that challenge.&uot;