THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 30, 1996 TAG: 9608300522
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY VANEE VINES, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: 79 lines
Two of the district's three high schools will have new principals when the academic year begins Tuesday.
At the School Board's Thursday meeting, Superintendent Richard D. Trumble announced the administration's decision to promote Churchland High Assistant Principal William E. Gibson Jr. to principal of Woodrow Wilson High.
And in a move that angered I.C. Norcom High School supporters at the meeting, Trumble announced that Norcom Principal DeWayne F. Jeter will move to a central office job as director of athletics, physical education and health.
Former Virginia Beach administrator Walter Taylor Jr. will replace Jeter.
Dozens of Norcom alumni and staffers showed up to criticize Trumble for the move, often describing it as a racist ploy to place a white principal at Norcom, the city's historically black high school.
Frequently, they interrupted the meeting with calls for justice.
``We've seen this happen time and again with black administrators who are on the rise, and especially when it comes to Norcom,'' city activist Shirley Hines, who is black, said in an interview.
Taylor, who is black, is not tenured in Portsmouth. Opponents of the personnel change say that will make it easier to remove him when a new Norcom High opens in 1997.
The administration's decision to move Jeter did not require board approval.
Taylor was hired as a ``high school principal'' as part of the board's 7-1 vote to approve the monthly personnel report. Trumble said Taylor would be Norcom's new principal.
Board member Elizabeth Daniels voted against the personnel report and an addendum to it - all of which listed resignations and new hires. Elder Charles H. Bowens II was absent.
Gibson, a 23-year veteran, will make $56,998.52 annually; Taylor, a 27-year educator, will make $64,436.60.
Early last week, Taylor, who was Virginia Beach's assistant principal of the year in 1995, had been named principal of the district's Green Run High. A Virginia Beach central office administrator said Taylor told the district last Friday that he would resign.
The Virginia Beach administration is expected to appoint an interim Green Run High principal today.
Responding primarily to pressure from black city residents, the Portsmouth board voted in March 1994 to grant tenure to Jeter after the administration initially had recommended that he be placed in another job and denied tenure as a high school principal.
Tenure refers to the status of holding one's position on a permanent basis after the fulfillment of specified job requirements.
At that time, Trumble had declined to discuss the matter because of confidentiality laws regarding personnel issues.
But other district officials privately said the 1994 recommendation to deny Jeter tenure was part of an effort to hold educators to higher standards before they received the security of tenure.
In a memo Trumble gave the board this week, the superintendent said Taylor would help the district ``make the new Norcom the model we envision.''
At Wilson High, former principal Lindell Wallace resigned in early July to take a job as assistant superintendent for middle school education in the Virginia Beach system.
In other matters:
The board told the administration Thursday to create a ``waiver'' provision only for students new to the district who want to participate in extra-curricular activities but don't have a 2.0 - or C - grade point average.
Such students will have nine weeks to bring their GPA up to a 2.0, if they had been eligible in their previous school districts. If they fail to do so in that time, they will not be allowed to participate in extra-curricular activities.
In 1993, the board decided that the 2.0 requirement would take effect this school year. At that time, it did not approve any type of waiver provision.
The measure became an issue after Robert Anderson, a Norcom teacher and coach, his wife, Pina Jackson, and others urged the administration to allow Jackson's brother to play football for Norcom this school year although he doesn't have a 2.0.
The brother, TaRon Anderson, was a gridiron standout at Tallwood High in Virginia Beach. Jackson said she's now her brother's legal guardian. Their mother died last October. Jackson said her brother had been distraught. He will play for Norcom this fall. by CNB