What we want for Gaithersburg High School’s next principal

We are looking for two things in the selection of a new principal: talent and MCPS support. We need a talented administrator with an ability to lead a large and diverse school body. GHS has been doing wonderful things under the leadership of Mr. Williams and his staff of assistant principals. GHS met its Adequate Yearly Progress targets for a second year in a row, including among its ESOL, special education and FARMS student populations.

Last year, GHS opened a first-in-the-nation stock trading room that provides students in the Academy of Finance with rigorous, real-world training in money management, portfolio selection and risk management concepts. The stock trading room is part of a larger Signature Academy structure, implemented by Mr. Williams, being launched schoolwide in the fall. Starting in August, every GHS student will choose one of four themed academies that will provide smaller learning centers within the school’s 2,200 student population.

And, most importantly, GHS is about to embark on a long-overdue building replacement project for a 60-year-old facility that our teachers say hinders the learning process. We need a talented leader who can take us through the construction process while moving us forward academically.

But we have had talented principals in the past. We also need a clear and strong commitment from MCPS, a commitment that our new principal will have the resources and support necessary to move Gaithersburg forward over the next decade. It is, unfortunately, that commitment that I find most lacking from MCPS.

Case in point is Mr. Williams’ move from GHS to Blair. MCPS officials have described this move as a ‘‘promotion” that will give Mr. Williams ‘‘unique opportunities” as a principal. How is it that a lateral move from a high school with 2,200 students to another high school with 2,900 students is a promotion? The answer is that it is not — it is not unless MCPS means to say that Gaithersburg High School is less important. In fact, this is the second time that a sitting GHS principal has been laterally moved to a down county high school.

So, does MCPS mean to say that Gaithersburg is not important? That is the message we hear when MCPS continues to take talented leaders from us. We have had three permanent principals and two interim principals since 2002. Over the past five-year period, the period for which school principal data is readily available, Gaithersburg is one of only two MCPS high schools (Sherwood being the other) not to have had the same principal for at least three consecutive years within that period. In fact, the class of 1999 was the last GHS graduating class to have had the same principal for their entire high school career.

With Mr. Williams, we thought we were putting that past behind us. The fact that Dr. Weast would knowingly move Mr. Williams from Gaithersburg and thrust us back into the transition and uncertainty we’ve endured for a decade is disheartening.

Above all else, we need to hear from Dr. Weast and the rest of MCPS that Gaithersburg is a valued school within the county. Then we need to see it in their actions over the next five years at a minimum.

The constant turnover and lack of support is draining on students, teachers and parents. We cannot be expected to invest in the future of our school when MCPS does not seem to be invested in GHS. Therefore, more than anything else, we want Gaithersburg to be a school to which other principals will want to be ‘‘promoted” so that they may pursue ‘‘unique opportunities.”

Laurie Augustino, Gaithersburg

The writer is president of the Gaithersburg High School PTSA.