Burton High principal set to take over new school
San Francisco school officials wasted no time in naming a new principal for Willie L. Brown Jr. Middle School after the inaugural principal on a closely watched campus unexpectedly quit a month into the school year.
Bill Kappenhagen, the current principal at Phillip and Sala Burton High School in San Francisco, will start at the new Bayview middle school in mid-October, district officials said Friday. An interim principal has been in place since Demetrius Hobson, 35, resigned Sept. 18.
“I asked Mr. Kappenhagen to lead Willie Brown because of his depth of experience and incredible track record in building and maintaining a positive school climate, growing a school’s academic and enrichment programs, and rallying the whole community around ensuring great outcomes for students,” said Superintendent Richard Carranza in a letter to parents.
Hobson resigned citing personal reasons, district officials said. But problems also cropped up in the first weeks of school. A teacher left, a software program for creating individ-
ual learning plans was shelved over privacy concerns, and some construction was still in progress, parents and officials said. In addition, some parents complained of bullying and fighting.
There are now 207 students in sixth grade at the school, and the district will add seventhand eighth-grade classes over the next two years. According to the district, the leadership turmoil has not driven an exodus of families. Three students have requested to transfer out next semester, while five students have requested to transfer into Willie Brown.
Still, this was not the kind of start officials had hoped for at the newly constructed school. They spent $55 million on the high-tech facility, bulldozing the under-enrolled and largely shunned school that was there before to offer one of the city’s most neglected neighborhoods the most innovative and well-resourced school in the district.
Hobson was a relatively inexperienced, Harvard-educated administrator pulled from Chicago to set up the new Bayview school. He handpicked teachers and organized the science and technologyfocused programs as well as a host of mental health, medical and counseling services.
Carranza didn’t go the same direction in his second pick. Kappenhagen, 41, was the founding principal of an urban middle school in Washington, D.C., before moving to San Francisco. He’s been Burton’s principal for nine years, overseeing a big jump in test scores and a surge in demand for the Portola neighborhood school.
He told Burton families Friday that he was “sad beyond words to leave Burton,” but relished the chance to “grow a new middle school in southeast San Francisco where students can get the strong foundation they need to be successful at a high school like Burton.”
Kappenhagen, who starts Oct. 19, said he is excited about the new opportunity and confident the students, teachers and families will rebound from the rocky start.
“The beautiful thing about working with youngsters is they're so resilient,” he said. “They really look for people who understand them, who love them ... and see potential in them.”