5 principals oversee 10 Orange schools this year
New program mentors up-and-coming leaders
Ten Orange County schools are sharing their principals with another campus this year, which district leaders say will help experienced administrators groom assistant principals.
The district has selected five “master principals” to mentor upand-coming leaders over two campuses. The new initiative is not intended to address a principal shortage or save money, one official said. In one case, the master principal is providing mentoring at a second campus that already has a principal.
“They’ve been able to deliver with a similar population, so we’re very confident in their abilities,” Deputy Superintendent Jesus Jara said about the principals selected for the program.
Others aren’t so sure, including Valerie Radcliffe, the mother of two children who attend Wolf Lake Middle, one of the schools sharing a principal.
“I don’t feel it’s a mentorship program,” she said. “I think that’s just how they’re marketing it. I think it’s a cost savings. I don’t understand why we can make a budget and not have a principal at every one of our schools. Every school should have a principal.”
In return for taking on a second campus, principals receive $30,000 on top of their normal pay. The average pay for an elementary school principal in Orange was $85,965 last year. Based on that figure, the district would be saving about $200,000 in salary costs.
Orange isn’t the first district to assign two schools to a single principal. In Volusia County, a handful of principals split their time between two small elementary schools during the recent recession, but the district decided in 2014 that each school should have its own leader.
Clark County Schools in the Las Vegas area “loans out” top principals to struggling schools in hopes of repeating their successes.
Orange School Board Chairman Bill Sublette said he views the move as a way to build up the pipeline of future principals, which is “a little dry right now.”
“I’m not real keen on it,” Sublette said. “I view it as a short-term temporary measure.”
While providing mentors to new administrators is a good idea, asking a principal to manage two campuses is a tall order, said James Spillane, a professor of learning and organization change at Northwestern University.
“To think that you could divide people between two schools, I think, is impossible,” said Spillane, who studies school leadership and management. “Certainly, you increase the difficulty of what is already a very difficult job.”
Wendy Doromal, president of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, agreed.
“It’s a big job, and I think for the sake of the students, teachers and staff, I think they need to devote their time to one campus,” she said.
When district leaders first asked Orange Center Elementary Principal Margarete Talbert-Irving to take on a second school, she said she thought it was a joke.
“After I chuckled, I had to think there must be some good things going on at Orange Center that would make someone want to have me replicate it at a different school,” she said.
Talbert-Irving has a full plate. Her second school, Rolling Hills Elementary in Pine Hills, received its second consecutive F from the state this year.
But she said parents at both campuses have been supportive, and she spends time each day at both so she’s visible.
One Orange Center parent, Sonya Wattley, said she didn’t even realize her daughter’s principal was spending half of her time at another school until the Orlando Sentinel contacted her.
“Wow. I’ve been to the school, and I’ve seen her, and I’ve spoken with her,” Wattley said. “She’s very good. She knows the parents and the kids.”
The other campuses with master principals are: Wolf Lake Elementary and Wolf Lake Middle in the Apopka area; Millennia Elementary and Millennia Gardens Elementary, which opened this year; Arbor Ridge K-8 and Wedgefield K-8, which is also new; Mollie Ray Elementary and Pine Hills Elementary, both high-poverty schools in the Pine Hills area.
Pine Hills Elementary has it’s own principal, but has a master principal that is mentoring Pine Hills and providing guidance.
Some parents say they’re thrilled with the arrangement. Erin Vernier said she and her oldest daughter, now a sixth-grader, were “overjoyed” when they heard in June that Wolf Lake Elementary School Principal Caroll Grimando would also be in charge of Wolf Lake Middle School.
“I had some concerns with the middle school,” she said. “Once we heard Ms. Grimando was going to be over there, she instantly felt better. I was so relieved.”
Radcliffe said having the two schools relatively near to each other helps, but she’d be upset if there was a problem at her child’s school and the principal was at another school 20 minutes away.
“I don’t understand the thought process behind this,” she said. “Why can’t we have a principal at each school?”
“I don’t understand the thought process behind this. Why can’t we have a principal at each school?” — Valerie Radcliffe, mother of two Wolf Lake Middle students