Bunn elementary, Chaney still don’t have principals

By Denise Dick

By DENISE DICK

denise_dick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Just more than a week before the start of the school year, two city schools don’t have principals in place.

The principals of Paul C. Bunn Elementary and Chaney High School retired at the end of the last school year.

Superintendent Wendy Webb said at a special school-board meeting Tuesday that interviews are ongoing with applicants for the Chaney position. Interviews are complete, and she’s in the process of making a decision regarding the elementary-school post.

School begins Aug. 26.

Webb said her goal is to have the two people recommended for the positions on the school board’s meeting agenda Tuesday and to have the individuals in place for the start of school.

“It really bothers me that we don’t have a principal for Chaney High School,” said Michael Murphy, board member.

Anthony Catale, school board president, said he was troubled by the two vacancies, too.

Webb said she would have preferred to have the personnel in place as well. Before the positions could be posted, though, they had to be approved by the academic-distress commission. That didn’t happen until earlier this month.

The commission was established to develop a plan aimed at getting the school district out of academic emergency.

In other business, board member Andrea Mahone volunteered to act as a liaison between the school board and the two commissions appointed to oversee it. The district was declared in fiscal emergency in 2006, and a fiscal-oversight commission was appointed.

Deborah Delisle, the state superintendent of public instruction, in a letter last month to both commissions requested that a school board member be selected to assist both commissions with the work.

The letter was part of Delisle’s approval of the academic-recovery plan for the district devised by the academic-distress commission.

Mahone said the commissions believe that the school board is taking a strong stand rather than working collaboratively.

Catale said it should be the board president who serves in that capacity.

“I don’t think anyone is trying to work against them,” Catale said. “We still have a responsibility. We’re stuck in the middle. We’re trying to balance our finances with academic success.”

He said it’s been frustrating when he’s requested a meeting among the board and both commissions and not gotten a response.

Mahone said the chairpeople of both commissions are communicating, but communication with the school board hasn’t been clear.