AMHERST — Throughout his professional career as an educator and in his public service to the community, Irv Rhodes has subscribed to a philosophy of making sure children feel safe and are loved and respected.
As Rhodes concludes his tenure on the Amherst and Amherst-Pelham Regional school committees, after serving seven years on the panels in two separate stints, he observes that he always centered his decisions on the needs of students — even as he also stayed grounded in the reality of municipal finances and ever-increasing budget challenges.
“My focus is on how can we provide the best education and educational environment for our kids,” Rhodes said. “I’ve always felt that way, that it’s our responsibility to provide an adequate education. It’s not just about money, it’s a philosophy from the superintendent on down.”
And this is a philosophy of ensuring that students thrive.
Rhodes’ time on the Amherst School Committee — from 2009 to 2012 and again from 2021 through 2025 — is the culmination of public service to Amherst that has included being an elected member of Town Meeting and the Amherst Charter Commission and an appointed member of the Finance Committee. He has also been on the board of directors of Amherst A Better Chance House, United Way and the International Language Institute in Northampton, and has been president of the Amherst Rotary Club where the motto is “service above self.”
He first got involved in Amherst schools as part of the Crocker Farm School Governance Council, when his children were students there, and his first foray in Town Meeting was when neighbors in Orchard Valley suggested he participate in town affairs, too.
“Once I got involved, I got involved,” Rhodes said. “I didn’t do it just half way.”
Campaigning, he said, is a way to get to know the concerns of residents.
“Running for public office is one of the most humbling things you can do,” Rhodes said. “One of the things most important to me is I knocked on doors, over 500 doors, and got a range of opinions and the views of the town. It is a privilege.”
Career in education, entrepreneurship
A native of German Township, a coal mining town in western Pennsylvania, Rhodes earned a scholarship to play football at Southern Illinois University, where he took both his studies and athletic endeavors seriously. He recalls that college was a “wake-up call to earn your keep.”
“You had to make it on the field and in the classrooms,” Rhodes said.
Majoring in secondary education, he took library courses, leading to his first professional work as a librarian at a school in University City, Missouri, getting hooked into the entire curriculum. He then moved onto working in a community with many working-class students, some who had already been called failures.
“These kids thrived because they were told they could do something. If you can teach kids and meet them where they are, you can teach them anything,” Rhodes said.
He was then recruited to be a founding teacher of New City School in St. Louis, meeting up with educators like Caleb Gattegno, the “words in color” inventor who suggested that this approach could get an illiterate child reading by the end of the day. Next, he went to Webster College, where he became the founding instructor in a master of arts program and an expert on the open classroom concept.
Following that, he went to Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, New Jersey, teaching education courses around child development, before arriving in Amherst in the 1970s, earning a doctorate at the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, concentrating on counseling psychology and organizational development, learning from mavericks who brought a cross-disciplinary approach.
Rhodes later became assistant superintendent at the Belchertown State School, focused on children’s services, and then became an educational policy fellow at George Washington University, where he was exposed to state government and national politicians, getting an intimate view of how policy is formed.
His entrepreneurial spirit soon came to the forefront, specializing in rescuing businesses in trouble, knowing how to diagnose an organization and consulting everywhere from Switzerland to Nigeria.
In between his stints on the school committee, he was on the Charter Commission until 2018, advocating for a strong town manager, and adamant that no mayor be part of the change from representative Town Meeting.
While there could be some tweaks and improvements in government, Rhodes said he applauds Town Manager Paul Bockelman, who meets the goals from the Town Council and has shown wisdom in developing the unarmed police alternative, the Community Responders for Equity, Safety and Service.
“He’s singularly one of the best administrators I’ve come across, publicly or privately,” Rhodes said. “Paul is a tremendous leader. He’s taken heat, but he stands up.”
At-Large Councilor Andy Churchill served with Rhodes on both the school committee and Charter Commission.
“He has the biggest heart in the world, truly cares about the town of Amherst, and particularly the kids of Amherst,” Churchill said, relating a story about how Rhodes would often interact with everyone at a fitness studio.
“He’s a people person. A connector. He builds community. We’ve been lucky to have him in ours,” Churchill said.
“I’ve seen him step up over and over to fill a need in the community and do the work that needs to be done to have a participatory government,” said Becky Demling, who is both a neighbor and the outreach director for Amherst Recreation. Demling said she appreciates both Rhodes’ breadth of service and his respectful dialogue.
Last summer, she worked with him to establish the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship SummerBiz program, offering an opportunity for Amherst teens to develop businesses. “He served as lead mentor and leveraged his connections in the business community,” Demling said.
Future of K-12 schools
Rhodes is now off the school committees at a time when he anticipates there will challenges, mainly due to the budgetary issues and impacts on fixed-income individuals.
“Some have had to move, some are hanging on by their fingernails,” Rhodes said.
“We have structural deficits in this town, those are now coming back to haunt us,” Rhodes said. This includes unfunded mandates, special education transportation and health insurance.
“These uncontrollable costs are really important to understand,” Rhodes said. “This upcoming year and the years to follow are going to be really hard.”
Beyond that, though, he was on the committee during the closing Mark’s Meadow School, at the north end of the UMass campus, and now seeing the opening of a new school will change the general education culture, and Crocker Farm will not be the school he and his family have known. “Neighborhood schools are no longer,” Rhodes said.
There will be a lot of adjustment issues even as brand new space comes online that replaces the open classroom models at Wildwood and Fort River schools. “It’s not going to be smooth; there’s going to be a lot of complaints,” Rhodes said.
He is confident in Superintendent E. Xiomara Herman’s approach, though, noting her detailed entry plan would make proud one of his mentors, Ken Blanchard, the author of “The One Minute Program.”
“I hope I brought a sense of how you go about implementing change, that everything isn’t an either-or situation , but that there are all sorts of shades of gray,” Rhodes said.
As someone who will be an observer, Rhodes said the message he wants to impart is that children should understand adults are involved and invested with them.
“I want to see people really understand these are our kids, and we owe them a lot,” Rhodes said.