Harold D. Chittim

School Superintendent
In Office	1941 - 1944
Preceded by	Eugene C. Vining
Succeeded by	Eugene C. Vining
School Superintendent
In Office	1946 - 1946
Preceded by	Eugene C. Vining
Succeeded by	Cyril D. Locke

Harold D. Chittim was Billerica's superintendent of schools from 1941 to 1946, years that his own war service divided in two. He held bachelor's and master's degrees in education from Boston University. He was listed as a school principal in the 1926 town report of Newport, New Hampshire, and later he was superintendent of schools at Marion, Massachusetts; in January 1939 he and John Ritchie wrote on Marion's new consolidated school for The American School Board Journal. In October 1939 he was elected superintendent of schools at Warren, Rhode Island, to fill the vacancy left by the death of Leroy G. Staples.

He came to Billerica in 1941 to succeed Eugene C. Vining, who had retired. In his first report he wrote that "it has been very gratifying to a new superintendent to find a capable corps of teachers already here," asked for a private office where he could meet parents, teachers and pupils without interruption, and proposed combining the junior and senior high school divisions into "a true six-year high school consisting of grades seven through twelve." The war shaped the rest of his first term. The teachers of the public schools distributed War Ration Books No. 2 and No. 4 in 1943, a job the rationing board said was "capably handled in Billerica under the direction of Mr. Harold Chittim." The Howe High School class of 1942 dedicated its yearbook to him, "whose geniality and helpful co-operation have made him a friend to every Howe High student," and he wrote war-time messages to the graduates of 1942, 1943 and 1944. When the football coaches left for the service in 1943 he found a new coach, Bill O'Neill, formerly of Holy Cross, and he sometimes entertained the Glee Club with piano selections.

In May 1944 the School Committee gave him a military leave of absence to serve with the Army Air Forces, and Mr. Vining came back as acting superintendent. From the Army Air Field at Clovis, New Mexico, Chittim sent a letter for the 1944 town report: he was an Operations Analyst with the Second Air Force, supervising and training the instructors of combat crews for the B-29 Superfortress, and later the analysts at all the combat crew training bases of its 16th Wing. "Army training is bound to affect greatly our post-war education," he wrote, and he listed ten lessons for the town's schools, among them small classes, "learning by doing," visual aids, vocational and industrial training, and planning for the education of returning servicemen.

He resumed the office of superintendent on April 26, 1946, but his resignation took effect on December 1 of the same year, when he left, as the school report put it, for "Government Service, Training Consultant." Cyril D. Locke, the Howe High School principal, was named acting superintendent in his place. The Billerica reports do not follow his later career.

Harold D. Chittim

Harold D. Chittim

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