Principal Re-Assignment in an Accelerated School: A Steering Committee Follows the Process.

N

15

Change Strategies; Educational Change; Elementary Education; Instructional Leadership; Principals; School Administration; School Culture; Superintendents

This paper explores strategies, based on experience, for coping with principal reassignment. It focuses on practical, repeatable approaches to reassignment that might also help central-office administrators who are contemplating a shuffling of principals. It offers as a case study an elementary school, an Accelerated School in Salinas, California, that underwent a principal reassignment. The article outlines the Accelerated School's philosophy and process and the steps in transitioning to a new principal. It then relates how the school not only had its principal reassigned, it also lost the two coaches who were helping to implement the Accelerated School's format. The school community reacted by forming a steering committee that addressed one fundamental question: How do we shape the hiring process so that an individual who is sensitive to the school's history and active involvement as an Accelerated School can be hired? The steering committee acted as a clearinghouse of information and dealt directly with the superintendent of schools. The committee and the superintendent then drafted a "job description" for the two coach positions. The respect shown the steering committee and the school demonstrated the district's willingness to honor a process that one of its schools was deeply committed to. (RJM)

1999

ED432026