The Berlin Central School District welcomes Mr. Tom Olsen to its Administrative Team. Mr. Olsen joins Berlin CSD as the new Director of Pupil Personnel Services.

Mr. Olsen has had a busy month at BCSD, working alongside the Summer Academy staff and attending administrative meetings as well as Board of Education meetings.  It has been a wonderful opportunity for Mr. Olsen to learn as much as he can about the district as he prepares for the coming 2023-2024 school year.

Please take a moment to welcome Mr. Olsen to the Mountaineer Community and learn more about him in his own words below.

Hello Mountaineers!

My name is Tom Olsen, and I am the new Pupil Personnel Services Director. I wanted to take a moment to formally introduce myself to you all and share a bit about my background. I grew up on Long Island, where much of my family still lives, and went to Marist College in Poughkeepsie for my undergraduate degree in psychology and graduate degree in school psychology. While pursuing my graduate degree, I worked in Marist’s IT department. 

After graduating, I worked as a K-12 school psychologist and CSE/CPSE/504 chairperson at Jefferson Central School District (JCSD). JCSD is among the smallest school districts in the State, with fewer than 200 students enrolled K-12. I had the opportunity to serve in a variety of roles, because the smaller the district, the more “hats” one must wear. I was able to get involved in just about everything you could think of from scheduling to finances, to field trips and everything in-between. 

Next, I worked as a school psychologist and CSE chairperson at Altmar-Parish-Williamstown (APW) school district. While quite a bit larger than JCSD, APW was still a small, rural school district. I, again, found as many ways to get involved as I could to help the district grow, create more opportunities and supports for students, and make APW the best place it could be! It was this love of contributing to school and district growth that led me to pursue my CAS in Educational Leadership through SUNY Oswego to become an administrator.

Growing up on Long Island, I never could have anticipated my love of small, rural districts. However, I have grown to love the strong community focus and desire to go above and beyond to provide the very best for students that I associate with these districts – districts like Berlin. It is this love and my desire to help schools and districts grow that brought me here to Berlin and the PPS Director role.

I am so excited to get to know you all! Please do not hesitate to reach out if you have ideas, suggestions, or feedback so we can all work together, as a community, to make Berlin the very best that it can be!

GO MOUNTAINEERS!

Tom Olsen
Pupil Personnel Services
tolsen@berlincentral.org
(518) 658-1500 (x1152)