THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 5, 1994 TAG: 9409050060
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
It was 2:35 p.m., and H.L. Trigg Elementary School Principal Georgetta Jackson stepped into the fading summer heat for bus duty.
In the twice-daily shift from administrator to traffic cop, Jackson walked briskly to and from, greeting, cajoling, halting and shooing children as they spilled out of the school and into the waiting buses.
This is Jackson's 14th year as an Elizabeth City-Pasquotank principal, but the faces are new to her. After she spent more than a dozen years at Weeksville Elementary, Superintendent Joseph Peel moved her this year.
``It's been a good experience for me,'' said Jackson, who has logged 25 years in the district. ``I've met many new people, and it's been invigorating.''
H.L. Trigg is not the only school with a new leader. Six of the district's 10 schools have different principals this year after a couple of resignations and an administrative juggling act aimed at breathing new life into the system.
``If you're trying to have an organization that grows and improves,'' Peel said. ``From time to time, there is a benefit in changing leadership.''
Change, he said, ``helps the organization get a different perspective, which is good.''
Jackson has traded places with Walter ``Buck'' Jolly, who is now principal at Weeksville. Other principals were moved or promoted to fill a domino line of vacancies.
Rita Collie left Pasquotank Elementary for a new position in the central administration. Cecil Perry moved from Central Elementary to take over at Pasquotank. Shelton Davis left Sheep-Harney Elementary to fill in at Central. Completing the cycle, Sheep-Harney's former Assistant Principal Yvonne Walton has taken over as principal.
Northeastern High School Principal Becky Phelps, promoted from assistant principal this year, called Peel's move ``the big switch-around.''
For some, like Phelps and Walton, the changes have meant added responsibility. For others, it has meant an adjustment - between primarily rural and urban schools, larger and smaller student populations, more or fewer grade levels to oversee.
Most say that so far the experience has been positive.
``I enjoy what I do, I guess that's the key,'' said Perry, who spent 14 years at Central before moving to Pasquotank. ``I didn't ask to change . . . and changing places is sometimes hard,'' he said, but ``I have absolutely no problems with adjustments.''
``In this school there are a lot more students with different kinds of needs,'' Perry said. ``I think I've been able to reach many of them already.
Most of the new principals inherited school-improvement plans formed by their staffs largely without them before they arrived. Different schools are changing instruction in different ways - trying multi-age classrooms, team teaching, new schedules or different instructional methods.
The approaches are slightly different, the principals say, but the challenges are the same at every school.
``We've got to learn the new teaching style and strategies that are most effective in working with students of the 1990s,'' said Davis, who put in six years at Sheep-Harney before moving to Central.
As far as adjusting to the schools' styles, ``It's really a matter of coming in and learning what the teachers' plans are for the year,'' Davis said. ``Things were pretty much in place here.''
The principals said their new students and staffs are receiving them well. ``I just bond with the people I work with,'' Jackson said. ``As I was waving goodbye to one group, there was a group here waving hello.''
Phelps said she was delighted when a new freshman told a teacher that Phelps looked less like a principal than a mother.
``I loved it,'' said Phelps, Northeastern's third principal in five years. ``I'm very caring, very nurturing, and I guess I feel like a mother to all 1,600 of these kids.''
With much of the burden of hiring and opening the school year behind them, Peel said the new principals have mostly settled in.
``I think they've all been hard at work,'' Peel said. ``They probably don't feel much like they're new anymore.'' ILLUSTRATION: A change in jobs
DREW C. WILSON/Staff
Cecil Perry is the new principal at Pasquotank Elementary School and
the former principal at Central. Changing schools can be difficult,
he says, but he has had no problem making the adjustment.
by CNB