Principal academy gets second $250,000 gift

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By Kelli Gauthier kgauthier@timesfreepress.com

The local academy to train would-be public school principals has received another $250,000 gift, this time from an anonymous donor.

The Principal Leadership Academy — a partnership of Hamilton County Schools, the Public Education Foundation, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce —now has received a total of $600,000 in donations. To fully fund the program, leaders say they need $300,000 a year. The anonymous donor and local businessman Joe Davenport both have pledged $250,000, to be doled out over five years in annual payments of $50,000. With the first $50,000 installment from Mr. Davenport and the anonymous donor added to $100,000 from Unum, the first year of the program is two-thirds funded, officials said.

“We’re soliciting donations,” said Christa Payne, director of development for the Public Education Foundation and the primary fundraiser for the project. “We want to make it sustainable; we’re raising money for five years.”

One of the academy’s main expenses will be the salary of a director who has not yet been hired. Tom Edd Wilson, president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, said members of a committee were in the process of finalizing a job description before the director search got under way.

The leadership academy will include two weeks of intensive training, one in the summer and one in the fall, as well as business mentors for the 12 to 16 assistant principals accepted into the program.

“We’re trying to create something that’s different from most projects of this type, in that the curriculum has some business tint to it,” Mr. Wilson said. “I can see the principal being in the mentor’s place of work periodically, seeing problems and how they’re resolved.”

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