For 25 years, Chris Parker had many duties at the Montgomery County R-II School District.

He worked as a teacher, administrator, coach, referee and custodian. He also worked at elementary schools at Jonesburg, Montgomery City and Bellflower, Montgomery County Middle School and Montgomery County High School.

Now, Parker’s long tenure with the school district has come to an end. In June, he retired as the high school principal after just one year.

Parker was the assistant principal at MCHS for one year before he was hired to replace Nick Larson, who is now the superintendent at the Community R-6 School District in Laddonia, for the 2021-22 school year. Parker decided to step down as principal in January.

Parker said he enjoyed his time as MCHS principal even though it was brief.

“This is a good building,” Parker said. “It has good people, good kids and good teachers. The graduation was nice. It was a year of getting back to normal. We had so many things going on the last couple of years. We tried to get some normalcy back.”

Now that he is retired, Parker will spend more time watching his three sons play basketball. Two of them, Carson and Collin, play at Columbia College. Another son, Clayton, is a sophomore at MCHS.

“My boys are young once, so I don’t want to miss all of that because I’m tied up with school stuff,” Parker said. “When you’re eligible to go out, you have to think long and hard about how much more you want to go. With me being younger, I can still go out and do the work field. I’m only 49, so I can work another 10 years and draw Social Security down the road. Basically, you have to ask yourself if you still have that fire in you. Some of that fire went out. But it was time.”

Parker graduated from MCHS in 1991. He started his 25-year tenure with the R-II school district in 1997, when he was a PE/health teacher at MCHS. He later worked as an assistant principal and principal at Montgomery County Middle School.

Parker said there’s a lot of responsibility in being a principal.

“When you’re principal, you wear a lot of hats,” Parker said. “You’re a psychiatrist, mom, dad, counselor, mentor. That’s one of the things where you have to be flexible. No day is ever the same. That’s the fun part about being principal. Every day is different.”

On May 27, Parker was one of 10 other retired staff members who were recognized during the R-II all-state awards ceremony at Montgomery County Middle School. Earlier in the day, a retirement open house was held for Parker at the MCHS school cafeteria.

“It’s a celebration of acknowledgement. When you say it’s going to happen and when you go through it and say, ‘Hey, it’s really happening,’ it’s a surreal moment,” Parker said. “It was a good day for me.”

Brian Ernst officially took over MCHS principal duties on July 1. Ernst worked for the Wright City School District for 11 years before being hired at his new job in March. Parker said he communicated with Ernst plenty of times.

“One of the things that happened was by me giving my resignation early, we were able to start that transition process once we got that new principal in versus me retiring in June or July with no time to transition,” Parker said.

“When I let them know in January that I’m going to retire, once they get a new person in, then he and I will start working on a lot of stuff. Anything that was forwarded to me about next year, he was also in the loop. I think things are ready to go. As a first-year principal, he has a good building to work with and he has good kids and good people.”