Back to school
Lamar Consolidated Independent School District is opening a new elementary, too.
Just a few weeks before school starts on Aug. 24, Amber Barbarow, 38, principal of the new Arredondo Elementary School in Richmond, was still waiting for the school’s playground, grass and some interior finishing touches.
Helping more than 600 pupils adjust to a new environment at the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District campus will be difficult, she said, but the former principal of Lamar’s McNeill Elementary is ready for the challenge.
“Our motto is ‘I can and I will’,” she said. “I want the kids to embrace that sense of culture and knowing that they can do anything that they put their mind to.”
Along with the opening of Arredondo, which will serve pupils who previously attended Thomas, Meyer and Hutchison elementary schools, changes in the district this fall will include new principals at three secondary schools.
Fred Black, 36, will take over George Ranch High School, Jerry Kipping, 50, will head Foster High School and Sonya Sanzo, 49, will be the new principal of Wessendorff Middle School, which, like all other middle schools in Lamar, is sixth-grade only.
All three administrators worked in the district before their new appointments, and all face rapidly growing enrollments and the goal of preparing students to be ready for college or careers after graduation.
“I don’t believe you principal from inside of an office; you spend time in classrooms,” Kipping said. “I want teachers to build relationships with their kids, to have a pulse on the campus and what the kids are doing.”
In mid-August, students are already at school for tennis practice and band camp, Kipping said. For him and the other administrators in new roles, student extracurricular involvement is as critical as raising Advanced Placement and SAT scores.
“Engaged students are happier students,” said Black, who in the past coached high school football in addition to teaching.
Sanzo anticipated offering more intramural sports, including a running club for students, and continuing science, math and technology afterschool programs.
At the elementary school level, Barbarow
said she plans to push her students at Arredondo as she did at McNeill, to embrace what she calls her essentials, adopted from the book “The Essential 55” by Ron Clark, in which students practice behaviors such as making eye contact, shaking hands and answering questions in complete sentences.
“It just made a difference in kids and their self-esteem and the way they treat each other,” Barbarow said.
A former Lamar Consolidated ISD student, Barbarow has worked for the district for her entire 14-year career in education. She already started an official chapter of the National Elementary Honors Society at Arredondo, the only elementary in Lamar besides McNeill to have one.
She chose a playground that has, in addition to traditional slides and monkey bars, a fitness structure for students to learn about maintaining their health.
In June, the district announced Danny Ward as the new principal of the planned Fulshear High School, which will open in the fall of 2016. Ward is new to Lamar; he was a principal at a high school in Taylor. Trustees will hire a new principal for Lamar Junior High to replace Kipping and a principal for the planned Leaman Junior High School, which will open in the fall of 2016 on the same campus as Fulshear.