Idyllwild School Principal Matt Kraemer to retire

Principal Matt Kraemer will be retiring at the end of June and handing over the job to current Idyllwild School sixth grade teacher Nicole Picchiottino. The newspaper ran a front-page story on her last week.

Kraemer was with the Hemet Unified School District for 24 years. He was a teacher in Yuma, Arizona for 15 years before that, giving him a total of 39 years in education.

“They offered an early retirement incentive,” Kraemer explained. “I was going to retire at the end of next year, then they offered the incentive, so it made sense to do it now.”

He has been the principal at Idyllwild School for 14 years and held the same title at Little Lake Elementary seven years before that. He started with the district as assistant principal at Whittier Elementary.

“This was always my dream job and the highlight of my career to be here, and a highlight to end here,” Kraemer admitted. “It has been a true blessing.” He has lived here for the last five of the 14 years he has been principal of Idyllwild School.

“We will be coming to Idyllwild quite often but I want to be closer to my parents to help out,” he said.

In a 2012 Town Crier story about Kraemer being named the district’s principal of the year, Kraemer is quoted saying “She [principal at Hamilton High] suggested I speak to a district official about an assistant principal position that was being filled. Well, the salaries here were better than Yuma, so I talked to him.”

I asked Kraemer to name some of his accomplishments as Idyllwild School’s principal. He said the Super Kids Bowl was his greatest accomplishment, which he started about 15 years ago.

“I came in 2007 and that was just in time when the recession hit and the housing market crashed,” Kraemer said. “The district was financially in a really bad spot and it had to lay off employees. We had no funding for middle school sports or arts programs. One of the things I am proud of is we never lost those programs. We maintained them through community support. We are in a [sports] league with private schools, so we were able to have games and able to have a theater program in the fall. We had adult softball games to raise money, and back then, we had signs on the outfield fence. We also got a donation from San Manuel. We received one from Cahuilla last year.

“We won two district school awards, one in 2008 and another in 2014. Emily Shaw [Idyllwild School principal before Kraemer] had more to do with the award in 2008.

“We won the Title 1 Academic Achievement Award at least five times since I have been here and we have been on the state’s honor roll numerous times.”

The sports and arts programs have been important to Kraemer and he is grateful to the community for its role in maintaining that.

“My personal belief and succeeding in education with kids is you teach to the whole brain and you provide those extracurricular activities like sports, music and art because students engaged in those activities have been proven to do well. And sometimes, that’s the only hook you have with some students.”

Right now, extracurricular activities have been minimal and that bothers him a lot.

“We still have Mr. [William] Beuche teaching instrumental and we have band, but we lost all of our sports.”

He is hoping they can bring back Town Hall sports to the top field after June 15, when Gov. Gavin Newsom has said he would be reopening the state should it meet two metrics.

“If I had to handpick anyone, which I can’t, I would handpick Nicole [Picchiottino].” According to Kraemer, the district did two rounds of interviews with the candidates. He does not know how many people applied for the position.

I asked Kraemer if he had any retirement goals yet.

“One of my goals is to be a better fisherman,” Kraemer said.