Again we get the news that Hamilton School is to have a new principal – the fourth in five years. It seems the school is a training ground for the system’s administrators. The community no sooner establishes rapport with a principal when, bingo, a new principal comes in and they have to start all over. Couple this with the school’s pupil and teacher turnover and you have the kind of instability and lack of on-going planning which plagues city schools.
It is particularly bad in Hamilton’s case. The school is easily the largest in the system. Counting the 500 children bused out daily and the children at the main school there are 1,400 enrolled.
For the first time in some years the community and parents were making some progress in attacking the apathy which inevitably results in such a large scattered school.
Mr. Burnett has been made principal of Enright Middle School. In his two years at Hamilton he worked closely with the community on such projects as the community school, the Hamilton School Committee and activation of the parent groups.
The school is lucky in getting Mr. Burnett’s assistant, Cleveland Young, as the new principal. He has taught at the school for nearly eight years and knows the community and school well.
This, however, does not abate our anger any. It seems the school board has a policy of shaking up the system each year — promoting one principal and moving five around to fill the ensuing vacancies. Each year one-third to a half of the principalships are changed — and the majority of these are in so-called ghetto areas.
Our question is: will the Board let Mr. Young have the standard two years of training and then move him too? We want some stability at this school and it’s time we let the Board of Education know it.
Originally published in The Paper, August 1971.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1971_08.pdf, printed page 4.
