Burnaford Stepping Down as Bellefonte Area Superintendent in 2024

Bellefonte Area School District will be searching for a new superintendent in the coming months.

Superintendent Tammie Burnaford has informed the school board that she will not seek a new contract or extension when her current one expires on June 30, 2024, she wrote in a message to district families on Friday.

“A new superintendent should get the chance to lead this incredible district and community,” Burnaford wrote. “Accordingly, the Board of Directors will begin a search for a new superintendent in the coming months. Of course, I will work hard in the interim and until my time is done as the proud superintendent of this district and community, and I will assist and help with the transition, as needed.”

Burnaford, who has been with the district for 20 years, was appointed interim superintendent in 2020 following the retirement of Michelle Saylor. In 2021, the board named her superintendent on a more permanent basis with a three-year contract.

After starting her education career as an elementary school teacher at Bald Eagle Area School District, Burnaford joined Bellefonte Area in 2003 as Pleasant Gap Elementary School principal. She was appointed as the district’s assistant superintendent in 2016.

“I have been blessed to work with the best staffs, students, parents and communities for the past 37 years,” Burnaford wrote. “As I’ve moved locally from school to school, district to district and community to community over the past 37 years, I have always landed in the best places in the world to be. I’d like to say that I left those locations and positions like a campsite, like my dad always said — better than I found them. But, the truth is they were utterly amazing before I even got there and after I left. I am ever so grateful for those experiences and the people I met.”

A Centre County native, Burnaford is a Bald Eagle Area High School graduate and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Penn State.