Ann Clark, FFE founder, leaves a lasting legacy

Dr. Ann Clark, a force in Connecticut education for decades and an unwavering champion of children, teachers and public schools, died at St. Vincent’s Hospital, August 19, 2026, at age 77.

Ann’s professional accomplishments were extraordinary. Those who knew her, however, understood that the titles she held told only part of her story.

She was a force of nature: intelligent, funny, generous, outspoken and compassionate, with a sharp wit that could surface at precisely the right moment. She could be formidable in defense of something she believed in, and few things inspired that fierceness more than children and their right to an excellent education, and teachers, who Ann called heroes.

Ann grew up in Pointe Claire, near Montreal, Quebec. She graduated from McGill University and came to New England to pursue graduate study in community education at Worcester State College. She subsequently earned her doctorate from the University of Connecticut in 1986.

Her career in Connecticut education encompassed classrooms, curriculum development, state and regional educational leadership, two public school superintendencies and, eventually, the university classroom.

Before joining the Bristol Public Schools, Ann served as director of curriculum and staff development for the Capitol Region Education Council and spent a year leading the Connecticut State Department of Education’s Bureau of Curriculum and Instruction.

Bristol became an important professional home, where she first served as an assistant superintendent and, beginning in 1997, as superintendent of schools.

Her years there reflected what would become the hallmarks of her leadership: high expectations for educators, strong curriculum, accountability paired with support, and an insistence that decisions ultimately be judged by what they did for children. Her administration strengthened teacher mentoring and induction, expanded school-business partnerships, established a districtwide accountability system, introduced new curriculum and added a school breakfast program.

Ann left Bristol in 2002 to become Superintendent of the Fairfield Public Schools.

Over the next eight years she guided Fairfield through substantial growth and change. The district grew to approximately 10,000 students. Preschool programming was established, Fairfield returned to a two-high-school configuration with Warde and Ludlowe, Advanced Placement opportunities expanded, and curriculum throughout the district underwent significant revision.

Her work brought statewide recognition in 2007 when the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents named her Connecticut’s Superintendent of the Year. She later served as president of the association from 2008-2009. Additionally, in 2010, she was awarded CAPSS Presidential Award, and in 2017, Moffly Media’s Light a Fire Award for being Best Friend to Children.

Yet awards were never an adequate measure of what mattered to Ann.

At the celebration marking her 2010 retirement, colleagues repeatedly spoke about her commitment to children and teens and how their well-being was vital to Ann.

Even before leaving the superintendency, Ann was already creating what would become another part of her legacy. In 2010 she founded the Fairfield Foundation for Education, conceived to provide teachers the resources to try imaginative approaches that conventional school budgets could not always support. Ann believed creativity and innovation belonged in classrooms and that motivated teachers deserved help turning clever ideas into reality.

She knew the key role imaginative teachers fill and understood that often there is not enough money for them to buy the needed materials to bring innovative programs to fruition. In Ann’s words: “I wanted to give teachers access to grant money, to give them the opportunity to be creative, to look at ways to invigorate the curriculum, and to make the work they do exciting for students. Most people have no idea that teachers spend their own money on materials for their students. The Fairfield Foundation for Education is their way to get their ideas funded.”

To date, FFE has awarded 124 grants, totaling $160,884, to every school in the district.

Years later, explaining what continued to drive her, she needed only a few words: “I’m inspired by helping kids and teachers.”

Retirement from public education was, predictably, not retirement for Ann.

She joined Sacred Heart University, where she prepared future generations of school leaders and continued her work in educational leadership. Her interests remained practical as well as scholarly: how to develop effective leaders, strengthen teachers and schools, and connect universities with the communities surrounding them.

Her work beyond the classroom was equally extensive. Ann gave her time and leadership to organizations serving children, education and the larger community, including the Center for Family Justice, the Bridgeport Public Education Fund, and other educational and nonprofit organizations throughout the region.

But an accounting of Ann Clark’s career cannot adequately explain the woman her friends knew.

Ann was generous – not merely in charitable contributions or committee work, but in the way she showed up for people. She was kind, empathetic, intolerant of bullies and abusers, and compassionate without ever surrendering her ability to tell you exactly what she thought. And she was funny.

When Ann left Bristol, among the advice she offered her successor was this: Keep focused on improving student achievement, preserve accountability – and maintain a sense of humor.

Anyone who knew Ann would understand why.

She possessed an uncommon combination of intellect and heart. She could challenge, cajole, argue, teach, defend and make people laugh, sometimes within the same conversation. She could be a formidable adversary when children, teachers or public education needed defending and an extraordinarily loyal friend when someone she cared about needed her.

Ann spent her life looking after other people’s children. Thousands of them. And she taught generations of teachers and school leaders to do the same.

For Dr. Ann Clark, education was never simply a profession. It was an expression of responsibility: to children, to teachers, to community and to the future.

As she once told a dear friend: “Living is about trying to improve things.”

Ann did. She was a visionary. And the schools, communities, educators, children, friends and relatives whose lives she touched are better because she was here.

Ann was born on June 16, 1949, to George and Elizabeth (Betty) Clark, and grew up with her younger brother, Paul, and nearby cousins, Tony and Peter Loomis and John, Peter and Sally. She is survived by the Jacobsen family of Canada, the Loomis family of Ridgefield, the Clark family of Australia, and her caretaker and dear friend, Carly Huebner. Ann had many dear friends in the Fairfield and Bristol areas, and at 3030 Park Ave., a community she loved and called home for seven years,

Information on her Celebration-of-Life is not yet finalized.

Contributions can be made to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, www.MichaelJFox.org, or the Fairfield Foundation for Education, click HERE, or Fairfield Foundation for Education, P.O. Box 320561, Fairfield CT 06825.

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Honor an Educator

Honor an Educator is a way to privately and publicly honor your child’s favorite teacher(s). The teacher gets a certificate that is suitable for framing and the school’s principal receives notification that the teacher has been honored. The teacher’s name is also placed in the honor roll on this website, a tribute that remains forever.

If teachers have been honored before, their names are included in the list in bold with an asterisk.

Donations start at $25 — it’s up to you to decide how much you want to donate. All money contributed to the Fairfield Foundation for Education, a 501 (c)(3) organization, is put into grants that teachers annually apply for, all with the sole purpose of bringing innovative programs to our public school children.

Click HERE for more information and the form to Honor an Educator!