When Bruce Scally serves as Wiscasset Middle School’s interim principal in the coming school year, he expects listening to be a big part of his job.

He’ll be wanting to listen to people’s concerns and help them with any anxiety about the school’s future as the town looks at consolidation, he said.

Change is always difficult, but more so when the shape that change will take is not yet known, Scally said, hours after Interim Superintendent of Schools Lyford Beverage announced the former Wiscasset High School teacher was the hire for the temp spot at the middle school.

In the early 1980s, Scally was the high school’s business education teacher and its coach for junior varsity soccer and varsity tennis. All four of his daughters graduated from Wiscasset High.

Scally and wife Margaret Scally, who is the high school’s guidance secretary,  moved to town in 1980. Bruce Scally has held teaching or administrative jobs at schools in Bath and Gardiner; and as far as New Hampshire and Millinocket that meant being home only on the weekend.

This school year, work will be about a mile and a half from home.

Scally sought the middle school job after reading a newspaper report about the decision to make it an interim one. School Committee Chairman Steve Smith said in July that there had been good candidates for a permanent hire, but, in light of consolidation, the department couldn’t promise candidates what lies ahead for the position.

“That sounded like something I should apply for,” Scally said Tuesday. It’s not his first temp gig. The Millinocket job was an interim one, created when Stearns Junior-Senior High School’s principal resigned in the middle of the last school year, Beverage states in a Tuesday press release.

Beverage has had the authority to make hires in July and August, ahead of the start of the town’s first school year since leaving Regional School Unit 12.

One nice aspect of being an interim principal is that it’s easier to make suggestions, without people wondering what’s next, Scally said.

As for what’s next for him, Scally is not ruling out staying beyond this school year if asked, or taking the permanent slot if it’s offered to him.

Describing Scally’s background in education, Beverage’s release states: “Scally has served as a teacher, a mentor, and an administrator in a career spanning over thirty years in both public and private education initiatives. Much of his work has been focused on career, occupational, and vocational training opportunities for secondary students.”

Longtime WMS principal Linda Bleile, whose retirement led to the opening, said she was very relieved the department has made a hire. And she praised the selection of Scally as principal.

“I’m very, very pleased they have chosen Bruce Scally, because not only does Bruce have experience as an administrator, which, with all the changes in laws, that’s going to be very helpful, but he also knows the community, and I think that goes a long way,” said Bleile, who taught Scally’s daughters in her teaching years.

Scally’s hire fills the third and final principal’s slot for the month-old school department. Other hires were Cheri Towle for the high school and Mona Schlein for Wiscasset Primary School.