Audio clip
Jim Scales
The second group of parents has come forward this month calling for the removal of the principal from their children’s school, but Superintendent Jim Scales said he needs to be cautious in his response.
“If every time there’s a group of parents complaining and we do a knee-jerk reaction, well, we’d have chaos in this district,” he said.
Parents from DuPont Elementary School say concerns about principal Anita Coleman date back to her arrival in November 2004 and that central office administrators have done nothing. Parents said Ms. Coleman made the school an unwelcoming environment for parent volunteers, humiliated teachers and made students act like they were “in a military school.”
Student enrollment has declined nearly 30 percent, they said. About seven teachers remain at the school who taught there when Ms. Coleman arrived, while the rest quit, retired or transferred, they said.
“Why central office keeps covering up for her, I don’t know,” said parent Kristy Heflin.
Ms. Coleman could not be reached for comment Friday at DuPont.
Dr. Scales said parental pressure had nothing to do with his recent decision to remove Harrison Elementary principal Vikki Allen. The issues surrounding Ms. Coleman began before his tenure as superintendent, he said. Since he came to Hamilton County, Dr. Scales says he has met with Ms. Coleman, DuPont’s PTA president and Don Beard, an area director.
When he hears a complaint about a particular principal, Dr. Scales said he passes it along to the area superintendent. Depending on the “multitude and consistency” of complaints, Dr. Scales decides whether to get involved personally, he said.
When Dr. Scales came to Hamilton County in 2006, increasing PTA involvement was one of his highest priorities.
“We need to have a principal in place who can nurture that (parental) support,” he said. “The difficulty we have is, do we need to move a principal or work on building better relationships between that principal and parents?”
Although academic achievement at DuPont has increased since Ms. Coleman came, Dr. Scales said it is “fairly obvious” that some of the students who left the school during the same time period, did so because their parents had a conflict with the principal.
Kelli Gauthier covers K-12 education in Hamilton County for the Times Free Press. She started at the paper as an intern in 2006, crisscrossing the region writing feature stories from Pikeville, Tenn., to Lafayette, Ga. She also covered crime and courts before taking over the education beat in 2007. A native of Frederick, Md., Kelli came south to attend Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in print journalism. Before newspapers, ...
