Melissa Bailey Photo
New Principal Rosalyn Bannon and mentor Cheryl Brown.
A former Register sports reporter became principal, and an engineer got dispatched to the city’s largest high school, as two schools saw changes in leadership just one week before school starts.
The school board approved eight promotions at a special meeting Monday night at 54 Meadow St. The board called the meeting in order to make last-minute personnel changes just in time for the start of school. Students return Monday and Tuesday of next week for orientation; the first official day of school is next Wednesday, Aug. 29.
Rosalyn Bannon (pictured above) was tapped Monday as the new principal of MicroSociety Magnet School, which serves grades pre‑K to 8 on Valley Street.
At Wilbur Cross, the city’s largest high school, Principal Peggy Moore is remaining in place and three of the seven assistant principals are changing.
The district has been scrambling to find a new principal at MicroSociety since Suzanne Duran Crelin announced her departure from the district just two weeks ago, after leading the school for two years.
Bannon started out as a teacher 20 years ago at the Davis Street School. She came to the teaching profession after a brief time in journalism: She graduated from the University of Connecticut with a B.A. in English and journalism. She served a stint around 1990 as a sports reporter for the Register, covering high school swimming. She continued to report on the schools while she went to Southern Connecticut State University to pursue what she decided was her true calling — teaching. She rose up from teacher to literacy coach and has spent the last five years as assistant principal at Ross/Woodward Classical Studies Magnet School.
Earlier this year, she threw in her name for open principal jobs. Then she began waiting “on pins and needles.”
Last Thursday, she found out she’d been chosen to take over at MicroSociety, which serves about 260 kids from New Haven and beyond. The school has no assistant principal, but the former principal is staying on until Aug. 30 to ease the transition. She found out the school still has two teaching jobs that need to be filled: a 2nd-grade classroom teacher and a 7th-and-8th- grade math and science teacher.
On Tuesday, her second official day on the job, Bannon will be interviewing candidates for those jobs.
“I’m hoping there are some viable candidates,” she said.
Bannon was asked how she feels diving into the new assignment so close to the start of school.
“It’s a challenge, but I work well under pressure,” Bannon said. “I’m used to working on a deadline.”
Bannon will earn $131,930 in her new post.
New Faces At Cross
Over at Wilbur Cross High School, two graduates of a new experiment in leadership training will be among three new assistant principals joining the school amid a last-minute turnover of administration.
The school, which serves 1,200 city kids, lost three of its seven assistant principals in recent weeks. Grace Nathman left to head up a new kindergarten overflow program.
Sheila Williams resigned Aug. 10 to become the principal of Platt Technical High School in Milford. And Jaime Ramos headed back to Fair Haven School, where he taught before joining Cross, to become an assistant principal.
The departures left room for three new leaders to step in to a high school that is amid a federally sanctioned overhaul based on failing test scores.
Enter Zakia Parrish (pictured). She’s one of five teachers who took part in a new experiment aimed to groom new leaders from within the school district. The program was a joint venture of the school district and Achievement First, a successful charter school organization based in New Haven.
As a “resident” of the program, Parrish spent the first half of last year embedded at Amistad Middle School, where she developed a new system to help teachers review data. In January she switched to Metropolitan Business Academy, where she worked with 19 kids who were falling behind. Parris developed what she called a “failure intervention” strategy to make sure kids had enough credits to move up a year in school. At the end of the year, all but one of them made it through, she said.
Parrish, who’s 37, from Gary, Indiana, arrived at the public schools after a career change. She got her Ph.D. in engineering and worked as an adjunct professor and research scientist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station before becoming a classroom teacher seven years ago.
Now she and Mark Sweeting, who also participated in the Achievement First-New Haven Public Schools residency, are both becoming assistant principals at Cross. Asked what her duties will be, Parrish said she planned to meet with her principal and learn just that.
The third assistant principal at Cross is Dina Natalino, who has 15 years’ experience in the school district.
A third member of the residency program, Jamie Baker, is filling Bannon’s shoes as assistant principal at Ross/Woodward.
In other news Monday, Julie Browning became assistant principal of Jepson Magnet School and Janet Clayton-Brown became second in charge at Lincoln-Bassett School.
The assistant principals will earn between $107,720 and $125,333 per year.
Speaking of late game.How come the school board wiil not tell us what is the status on the case of Hillhouse High School principal Kermit Carolina.