Just days into Bedford High School’s first year with a senior class, the school’s new principal, Stephen Donovan, resigned, with the School Board accepting his resignation after a police officer stopped him for allegedly driving after drinking, Superintendent Timothy Mayes told the school community in a letter on Aug. 28.

“Last week (Donovan) made a poor decision to operate his motor vehicle after consuming alcohol. He was stopped by a police officer. As a result he will need to appear in court in September and will likely lose his license for a period of time,” Mayes wrote in the letter.

School started Wednesday, Aug. 26, and the board accepted his resignation the next night, Mayes said. Donovan was replacing George Edwards, who took a job as associate director of the Commission on Public Secondary Schools, part of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

Donovan did not come to work on the first days of the school year.

“He has not been in at all this week,” Mayes said on Aug. 28.

The board accepted the nomination of Bob Jozokos assistant principal, as interim principal to serve out the rest of the year. Jozokos has been with the school since before it opened, serving on the planning team.

The news put a damper on the start of the new school year.

“I can see the excitement in the kids’ faces, and the enthusiasm of the staff and so on. So, this takes a little bit of wind out of our sails,” Mayes said.

Mayes would not say if Donovan had been arrested or charged with a crime, and would not say where he had been stopped by police. Bedford police said it did not happen in Bedford.

Donovan was principal at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School in Acton, Mass., for 16 years. He retired from that position in 2008, and spent last year serving as the interim assistant superintendent for special services in the Brookline School District in Brookline, Mass.

“In his letter of resignation to me, Mr. Donovan stated that he ‘believes this result will prevent me from serving you and the high school community in the outstanding manner we both expected,’” Mayes wrote in the letter. Mayes said principals are called on to make decisions affecting the lives of students all the time, and the job requires a “certain level of trust and integrity” with the community, parents and students. “You have to be beyond reproach,” Mayes said. “That doesn’t mean that you don’t make mistakes, but this was obviously poor judgment on his part. And we just felt that given this year, and where we are on the development of the high school, that this could jeopardize our ability to move forward.”

Mayes said that Friday morning he broke the news to teachers at the high school and spoke to them about the best way to address the issue with students. There was also an advisory meeting with students, he said.

Then, he said, “We went to first block, and business as usual.”

School Board Chairman David Sacks said he was shocked and disappointed by the news.

“We were very excited to have found him, someone of his talent and skill to lead our school. But we also know that a high school principal is a leader of students and teachers, and they have to be beyond reproach and a model in behavior,” he said. “It’s obviously a lapse in judgment on his part, and he’d been called to make judgment calls all the time,” Sacks said.

Both Mayes and Sacks praised Donovan for his honesty regarding the incident and his decision to resign.

“I think that’s the right decision for everyone that’s affected. I think that shows how you deal with a mistake,” Sacks said. “I think students can learn what not to do from watching this but also how to deal with adversity.”

Sacks said the board would begin a new search for another principal.

“We are going to do a search. We’re going to do as broad a search as we did the first time around,” he said. “That’ll happen obviously parallel to running the school.”

For now, Sacks said he thinks parents and students will rally around the school.

“I’ve even heard parents are calling in to say, ‘Hey what can we do to help?’” he said. “I think there’s going to be a rallying cry,” he added. “We’ve got a senior class this year. So we can’t be focusing too long on this: we’ve got to move forward. We’ve got a job to do,” he said.