Blackstone Valley Prep names head of high school
CUMBERLAND – The Blackstone Valley Prep Board of Directors on Monday voted unanimously to appoint Michaela Keegan as the new head of school for the high school, the principal position that has been vacant this school year.
She will finish out this school year as assistant principal of Archie R. Cole Middle School in East Greenwich and join Blackstone Valley Prep High School for the 2017-18 school year, though BVP Executive Director Jeremy Chiappetta joked that “she’ll start working last month.”
“She comes across as a collaborator,” Chiappetta told the board before its vote. “We have held out, and we have held out for a reason.”
The last head of school was Jonathan Santos Silva, who held the position from BVP High School’s founding in 2014 to this past August, when he began working at The Highlander Institute. Chiappetta has served as interim leader and will continue to do so through this school year.
Keegan said what most drew her to BVP was the school’s unified mission.
“I was excited to be able to be part of an organization or school where everybody wanted the same thing,” she said. Keegan also noted, “They have a very clear vision for who they want to be and what they want to be.”
That vision, she said, is about being a leading high school, not only in Rhode Island but also nationally.
Keegan also noted how impressed she was with the presentation Drew Madden, director of innovation and accountability at BVP, gave to the board of directors about college readiness. Madden spoke about the benchmarks in place for preparing students in grades 9-12 – though BVP will not have a senior class until the next school year – to apply for college.
Keegan, a Rhode Island native, got her bachelor’s degree at the University of Rhode Island in 2002 after studying political science and psychology. She realized toward the end of her time at URI that she wanted to be a history teacher and subsequently spent a year as a teaching assistant.
In 2005, she graduated from Rhode Island College with a Master of Arts in Teaching for history and special education. Until 2012, she worked as a special education and history teacher at Hope High School.
Chiappetta noted that he worked with Keegan when she was a first-year teacher at Hope High School.
Keegan was then assistant principal of Mount Pleasant High School for a year before becoming the principal of Juanita Sanchez Educational Complex. She came on board a year and a half after the Providence Academy of International Studies and the William B. Cooley Health Science Technology High School merged into the Juanita Sanchez Complex.
She went through the Principal Residency Network while earning an Ed.D. from Johnson & Wales University. The East Greenwich native has spent this year as assistant principal of Archie R. Cole Middle School.
Looking ahead to her official start at BVP High School head of school, Keegan said, “I’m not a big person to come in and make changes right away. I like to just listen.”
She added that she doesn’t foresee many challenges in transitioning from traditional public school leadership to charter school leadership, and that anything that could be a challenge may present “more of an opportunity than anything.”
Keegan was selected from among 76 applicants. Chiappetta said he remotely interviewed 20 people, invited 10 candidates to complete hiring exercises and then conducted four in-person interviews.
Keegan completed more than 10 hours of interviews, including one with Central Falls Mayor James Diossa – who is chair of the board of directors – this past weekend.
Diossa said he was very impressed with Keegan’s resume, and that she will be joining at a critical time, considering the high school is moving to its new location at 15 Jones St., and the high school will have its first graduating class in 2018.