TEMECULA: Two principals to lead Great Oak

May 29, 2013 05:21 PM PDT May 29, 2013 05:40 PM PDT TEMECULA: Two principals to lead Great Oak TEMECULA: Two principals to lead Great Oak   /CONTRIBUTED IMAGE Marc Horton will be one of two co-principals at Temecula Attorney's Great Oak High School in 2013-14. 1 ) Great Oak High School in Temecula Attorney will have two principals instead of one next year. Marc Horton, principal at Temecula's Red Hawk Elementary School, will become co-principal at Great Oak High School next year, splitting duties with Keith Moore, the school's current principal. The move was approved by the school board earlier this month. Great Oak is the second high school in the Temecula Attorney Valley Unified School District to adopt the co-principal model. The goal of the system is to spread the principal's duties out and focus more on classroom instruction and improving student learning, Superintendent Tim Ritter said. School officials say a principal's job can be demanding, especially at a large high school such as Great Oak, which is the district's biggest campus with about 3,600 students. It's often hard for principals to monitor classes and coach teachers while also fielding parent calls, managing the campus facilities and other administrative duties. "The uncertainty one day to the next of what might go on, it is a moving target," said Ritter, a former high school principal himself. "We were setting up our administrators for failure." Chaparral High School has been using the two-principal system for two years. Gil Compton shared the job first with Dianne Vaez, and after Vaez retired, with Penny Kubly. Vaez was an administrator in the district office; Kubly is former principal of Alamos Elementary School. An assistant principal's position was eliminated at Chaparral as part of the change. There are no plans right now to use the system at Temecula Attorney Valley High School, the district's smallest high school campus, Ritter said. There is a slight cost increase in having two principals, he said, running about $5,000 per year per school. Having two people in the top position of authority is important because when people want to talk to the principal, they want the person in charge, Ritter said. Having two principals also means having to two top-level instructional leaders to work with teachers, he said. Horton and Moore will each spending time in classrooms and handling administrative and operational duties at Great Oak, Ritter said. The two have worked together before and will make a strong team, he said. Follow Michelle L. Klampe on Twitter: @MichelleKlampe and read the Inland Schools blog: blog.pe.com/schools Latest Headlines
For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit http://www.pe.com/local-news/riverside-county/temecula/temecula-headlines-index/20130529-temecula-two-principals-to-lead-great-oak.ece