Officials To Recommend Principal Candidate

Purifoy’s Father, Brother Live In Farmington And He Has Visited Often

FARMINGTON — School officials will recommend an associate high school principal from Texas as the next principal for Farmington High School, Superintendent Bryan Law said Monday afternoon.

Jon Purifoy, associate principal for Marshall High School in Marshall, Texas, spent several hours in Farmington on Monday going through a second interview process with teachers, principals and administrators.

“He did a very good job,” Law said. “He’s been through a very extensive process, six hours of interviews, and we feel very confident in his abilities.”

Law said he has talked to Purifoy’s principal at Marshall and “everything we’ve heard about him is positive. We’re very excited.” Marshall High School has about 1,500 students.

Law said a small group of high school students also met with Purifoy on Monday morning.

“We just wanted to watch him interact with the students,” Law said.

Law said the interview committees will recommend Purifoy for the position during a special school board meeting but did not think the meeting would be held until next week. He said Marshall High School is in the midst of testing and Purifoy felt he should be there for that commitment.

Purifoy and two other top candidates interviewed for the high school principal’s job last week. The candidates met with three committees and then sepa- rately with Law.

By the end of the week, Purifoy was the only candidate remaining.

Law said the money was not available for Chad Scott, an assistant principal at Bentonville High School.

“It was hard to make that one work due to the money,” Law said Friday. Previously, Law had said that Scott would have to take a pay cut to come to Farmington.

Then Friday afternoon, Rob Lindley, who is principal at Valley View High in Jonesboro, withdrew his name from consideration.

Law said the committees were excited about Purifoy last week and that he had been a “strong candidate” from the beginning.

“He’s from a very large school district and is doing a lot of good things,” Law said.

Purifoy on Friday said his father and brother live in Farmington and he and his family have visited Farmington many times during the past eight years. His sisterin- law, Meredith Purifoy, works for the Farmington School District. She is a a speech pathologist at Ledbet- ter Intermediate.

“Farmington is a gorgeous town,” Purifoy said. “It’s a nice, peaceful town with excellent facilities. It looks like a great school.”

According to his resume, Purifoy has been an educator since 1994. He has worked for Marshall High School since 2003. Currently, he is an associate high school principal and his responsibilities include 11th grade assistant, Crime Stoppers sponsor, management of personnel and facilities and oversight for discipline for all grade levels. He also supervises the assistant principals, facility repair, maintenance, security and the custodial staff.

Purifoy said he has worked as an associate principal for five years and through that experience has “learned the academic side as well as the discipline side” of leading a high school. He now would like to move into a principal’s position, Purifoy said.

He was interested in the position, he said, because he wants to move closer to family and because his daughter, a high school junior, hopes to attend the University of Arkansas.

Since applying for the Farmington job, the principal’s position at Marshall High has come open but Purifoy said he did not submit his name as a candidate for that job.

“I’m really interested in this one and wanted to put all my effort into the Farmington job,” Purifoy said.

Purifoy’s past experience includes working as a softball coach.

He said he moved out of coaching and into administration because he would be “able to touch more lives” and “reach more kids.”