Montana educator leads local principal academy

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by Kelli Gauthier

Aspiring school principals will get their first taste next week of the leadership academy they signed up to attend after officials announced its new director Friday.

Godfrey Saunders, a 32-year veteran educator and former principal of Bozeman High School in Montana, will lead 13 assistant principals through a program designed to give them practical knowledge about how to run a school.

Funded with about $600,000 in donations from Unum, businessman Joe Davenport and an anonymous donor, the academy is a joint partnership of Hamilton County Schools, the Public Education Foundation, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s about what we can do together to make this work,” Dr. Saunders said after Friday’s news conference at Unum. “There are things that business leaders are good at, such as developing effective policy, managing resources.”

Inadequate principal leadership in Tennessee was noted by reviewers of the state’s Race to the Top application on their scoring sheet. Tennessee still went on to win $500 million in the federal education reform sweepstakes, despite the negative comments on principal training.

Chattanooga is no different from any other community when it comes to the need for prepared leaders, said school Superintendent Jim Scales, who has wanted to start an academy for the past several years.

“I think it’s something we need in public education, period,” he said. “A lot of (incoming principals) are not equipped with the leadership piece, the curriculum piece and the operational piece.”

Each of the 13 assistant principals chosen for the academy will be paired on Monday with a business leader who has volunteered to mentor the school administrator next school year.

Mentors include leaders at area businesses such as BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, Unum and Volkswagen Group of America.

Tom Thompson, senior vice president of client services for Unum, said after the positive difference that good principals had made in his life, he was eager to volunteer his time to help train new leaders.

“I’ve got 36 years in management, and there are so many parallels (to managing a school),” he said. “And where there are differences, I imagine we’ll both learn some things.”

Dr. Saunders will be in and out of each assistant principals’ school throughout the year, while also holding seminars for the administrators several times a month.

Haley Brown, assistant principal at Normal Park Museum Magnet Lower School, said she looked forward to the training.

“I’m most looking to be able to walk into a principalship and feel like, ‘I can do this.’ I imagine it’s going to be a big step, and I hope this will give me some confidence,” she said.

Dr. Scales said that, from now on, enrolling in the Principal Leadership Academy basically will be a requirement for getting a job as a Hamilton County principal. He added, though, that he wouldn’t overlook the occasional “diamond in the rough.”