Off to new NHPS roles. Clockwise from top left: Kimberly Daniley, Nicole Brown, Cari Strand, and Nicholas Perrone.
Hill Central, Edgewood School, and High School in the Community will all have new principals this school year — thanks to a leadership shuffle that took place two weeks before the start of the 2025 – 2026 academic year.
Those personnel transfers were presented to the Board of Education during its latest biweekly meeting, which was held online via Zoom and in person at King/Robinson School.
The following transfers are effective as of Tuesday:
• Nicole Brown will go from being Hill Central’s principal to Edgewood School’s principal;
• Nicholas Perrone will go from being Edgewood School’s principal to helming High School in the Community;
• Kimberly Daniley will go from being the principal of the now-closed Brennan-Rogers School to the principal of Hill Central;
• Cari Strand will go from being the principal (or building leader) of High School in the Community to a new itinerant position titled Career & Technical Education (CTE) Lead.
There were also a total of 21 teacher transfers and six paraprofessional transfers included in Monday’s personnel report, which was information only and did not require a vote from the board.
Reached for comment Tuesday, Nicole Brown told the Independent, “For the last fifteen years, the Hill Central family has been a source of pride and joy where students learn and thrive. I look forward to joining the Edgewood Community to build upon the positive, familial environment while bringing a focus on joy, academic rigor and inclusivity.”
In a separate interview, Cari Strand recalled starting at HSC in 2009 as an itinerant Dual-Credit Specialist (then called ISSP Coordinator) and then moving up the ranks to a magnet resource teacher, curriculum leader (assistant principal) in 2015, and building leader in 2021.
“I’ve loved every role I’ve had at the school and leaving is certainly bittersweet. I’m most proud of hiring an incredible team of teachers and maintaining a strong teacher retention rate, as I’ve been lead on that for the past ten years,” she said. “At HSC, the faculty works hard, but everyone takes care of each other so that they have the energy, capacity, and resources to do their best for the students.”
She said her goals going into the new role, which she applied for, will be to expand on the impact and focus she had at HSC, which was “to ensure that students left with the skills and knowledge they needed to define and determine their own futures.”
In her new role, she said she will work with Career and Technical Education (CTE) teachers across NHPS high schools as the team works to prepare students for day-to-day work experiences after high school. Her hope is that strong CTE classes “can have positive impacts on attendance, graduation rate, students’ sense of belonging, and more.”
Nicholas Perrone, meanwhile, told the Independent Monday that, while it is difficult to leave Edgewood’s “incredible school community,” he’s inspired to dive into HSC’s school themes.
“Essentially, it will be important that the [HSC] school community know that my intention is not to come in and make sweeping changes,” he said. “The themes of HSC are what inspire me the most; these ideals will carry the work and keep the focus to empower student leadership and vision. Professionally, I am super excited for the opportunity to learn and lead alongside the school community. The funny thing is that we were already working on a partnership between the two schools where the HSC WILD student leaders were going to help lead and facilitate an overnight trip for our Edgewood grade 6 – 7 students this fall. We still hope to make that happen, and I will be thrilled to witness this partnership come to fruition.”
Click here to read Perrone’s letter to Edgewood’s community in which he notes moments over the past six years of his leadership that he’s most proud of. Those include growing the school’s ECHO program, improving attendance numbers and academic scores, hosting three Chinese teaching fellows from Yale for a language program for students, and developing a guest artist program. He also described a few of his regular “bad jokes” and a reminder he will stay in contact with Nicole Brown as new principal.
Perrone also shared with the Independent the following drafted remarks he planned to give at Monday’s school board meeting: “It is an honor to formally accept this appointment. First, to my Edgewood school family, you are an incredible community that embraces the importance of diversity and identity. As a parent, I am excited to witness the ways in which the school will continue to grow. As I said every morning, ‘make sure to grow a little more today.’ And to the members of High School in the Community, during a time of political uncertainty and downright fear for what our government will do next, this is an amazing opportunity to help empower the voices of our younger generation to serve, to design policy, to push for justice, and to lead our world in a brighter and better direction. It is my pleasure and honor to learn and lead alongside this vibrant school community that values student leadership, social justice, public policy, and service. Thank you.”