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“At this table we have a lot of deep conversations about the betterment of kids — trying to do and make sure kids have good outcomes.”
Dr. Otis Smallwood, Bertie County Schools superintendent
Every day, Dr. Otis Smallwood walks through the doors of his alma mater — Bertie High School — which now houses the Bertie County Schools (BCS) central office. He used to walk the halls as a student, but now he walks them as an educator.
Smallwood grew up here, went to school here, worked here for 14 years, then left for a position in a neighboring county in 2008, but returned to BCS for good in 2019 as superintendent. In 2025, six years after coming home, Smallwood was named Northeast Regional Superintendent of the Year.
He accepted the award on behalf of every superintendent in the region and with the teachers and students in Bertie County Schools in mind. He believes this accolade is a representation of his district and his region, not just himself.
“I think sometimes people look at Bertie as the underdog,” he said during a conversation in May 2025 before receiving the honor.
In rural districts, funding and enrollment can be low, and that impacts what resources are available for students. For BCS, that challenge requires more creativity and a community-focused approach to problem-solving.
Seeing as Smallwood’s roots run deep here, being community centered comes to the superintendent naturally.
During Smallwood’s tenure as superintendent, he’s tackled the three big issues that often loom over rural districts: recruitment, retention, and teacher housing. These obstacles are tangled together, and to solve one, you must address them all.
In order to attract teachers, there has to be not just affordable housing, but available inventory. And with teacher vacancies around the state, the district has to think outside the box to attract talent and fill positions.
To combat teacher vacancies, BCS looks to international educators.
Bertie Middle School’s hallways are lined with international flags. Educators from the Philippines, Jamaica, and Ecuador work throughout the district. To sponsor these educators and their visas, the school district needed additional funding, so Smallwood went to the county commissioners for the money. They met him halfway and gave him half of the money he requested.
“The commissioners have really been a good partner with us,” he said.
Still, Smallwood needed to come up with additional funds. He then looked to a quarter-cent sales tax, which the school system had been trying to pass for three years. If passed, this new tax revenue would fund school efforts to hire and keep international teachers.
Smallwood began informing the public on what this additional money could mean for the school system and encouraged those in the education space to do the same.
The school district was successful, and the new sales tax passed in 2020. According to the 2024-25 county budget ordinance, the tax was expected to generate $315,592 for the school district that year.
Now, BCS has 33 international educators this school year, can offer foreign language classes at every elementary school, and is preparing to offer a dual language program during the 2026-27 school year.
Read more about BCS
The last piece of the puzzle was completed when Dream Pointe, a teacher housing complex, opened in 2024. Smallwood and his team formed partnerships with the Town of Windsor, the county board, and the newly created Partners for Bertie County Public Schools to build the apartment complex for school employees. All 24 units are occupied.
In the past six years, Smallwood has focused on school infrastructure. For athletics, he updated the football field by grading and irrigating the surface and putting in state-of-the-art lights. The school district hadn’t had a usable track for 15 years, so they built a new one. They were able to host their first home meet in the spring of 2025, and four BCS students qualified for state.
When Smallwood returned to the district in 2019, the BCS board challenged him to increase Career and Technical Education (CTE) offerings. Two community colleges serve Bertie, Roanoke-Chowan Community College and Martin Community College, and he worked with them to bring some classes that were offered on their campuses to the high schools.
He changed a woodworking class to carpentry, so students could get college credit. He brought cosmetology back to the high schools. At the end of the 2025 school year, BCS broke ground on a new CTE building that will sit beside Bertie High School and is scheduled to be completed within a year.
Now, with school back in session, Smallwood is focused on new beginnings and energizing his staff.
“We can do our part, try to inspire a sense of hope in the schools, and it could extend out from the schools into the community,” he said. “My goal is to just try to inspire a sense of hope — so these kids can feel hope and they can see it and they can feel it from the adults in the building.”
Along with being named Northeast Regional Superintendent of the Year, Smallwood received news of a second accolade that took him by surprise this summer — Order of the Long Leaf Pine. It is the highest award for state service, given to someone who embodies what all North Carolinians should aspire to be.
Even joining the governor at his residence in Raleigh for the occasion, Smallwood told EdNC jokingly he thought it still might not be real — until he saw a former student when he was signing in.
The fellow Bertie County native is now a state trooper, and he said, “Yes, Dr. Smallwood, your name is on the list.”
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