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.