BARRE — When it comes to running Spaulding High School, the Barre Unified School Board has decided two heads are better than one.
After back-to-back, closed-door interviews with a pair of principal candidates Thursday night, the board followed Superintendent Chris Hennessey’s recommendation and agreed to hire both.
Though the, 4-2, vote wasn’t unanimous, it was decisive and paves the way for the in-house promotion of Assistant Principal Luke Aither while pairing him with Marlon Maylor, one of four assistant principals at Essex High School.
Board Chair Sonya Spaulding confirmed the board’s decision to hire Aither and Maylor as co-principals, while noting the dissents of board members Alice Farrell and Terry Reil. Spaulding did not participate in the vote and board members Nancy Leblanc and Sarah Pregent were unable to attend the in-person meeting that was largely held in executive session in the Spaulding High School Library.
Heading into Thursday night’s interviews Spaulding said the board was armed with Hennessey’s recommendation it hire both finalists in the hastily arranged search for Principal Brenda Waterhouse’s successor.
Waterhouse, who has served as Spaulding principal since 2015, isn’t leaving the district, but she is leaving the Barre-based high school to take over as co-principal at Barre City Elementary and Middle School during the coming school year.
The move, which was Waterhouse’s idea, filled a vacancy tied to the looming departure of Hayden Coon, while opening the door to the principal’s office at Spaulding.
Aither, who was promoted to assistant principal at Spaulding in 2013 was among those who applied for the job, and so was Maylor.
Both were vetted and interviewed by a broad-based search committee and recommended to Hennessey, who decided to dust off an administrative model that was being used at Spaulding when he signed on as assistant principal there back in 2006.
That was at the tail-end of an eight-year experiment that started with a pair of in-house promotions to fill the vacancy created by the departure of then-principal Bill Sullivan. Cindy Donlon was the school’s guidance director at the time and Dennis Hill was assistant principal. Both were promoted to co-principal and while Hill was replaced by Jeff Maher before Hennessey was hired as assistant principal in 2006. Maher was replaced by Bob Phillips in 2007, and it wasn’t until Donlon left in 2008, that the school reverted back to having a single principal.
Hennessey said Friday he sees value in reviving that model given the complementary skill sets of Aither, whose primary focus will be operations and student management, and Maylor, whose strengths are in academics and teacher leadership.
“I just saw this as a huge opportunity to bring in some new thinking along with some established expertise on the running of the building,” he said, adding: “It’s kind of like taking the best of both worlds.”
Hennessey predicted Spaulding will benefit from the combination of Maylor’s fresh perspective and Aither’s institutional knowledge.
“We’re bringing in a dynamic, diverse and experienced team,” he said.
The newly hired co-principals will be joined by Mari Miller, who was just hired to fill the assistant principal’s vacancy created by Jim Ferland’s mid-year resignation.
Hennessey said Miller, a long-time teacher and former athletic director at Rice Memorial School, will be Spaulding’s only assistant principal when school opens in the fall. Aither’s current position is being eliminated, he said.
Though pre-K-8 schools in Barre and Barre Town have long relied on co-principals — one to focus on the elementary school program and the other on the middle school – it is less common at high schools.
It won’t be new to Maylor. Essex High School, where he has worked as an assistant principal for the past year, has co-principals and, Hennessey noted, so does Harwood Union High School.
Born and raised in Tampa, Florida, Maylor is the son of an African American mother and a Jamaican father. He completed his undergraduate from the University of South Florida with a degree in finance and his master’s degree from National Louis University with a degree in education leadership.
Maylor taught high school social studies for 10 years prior to spending three years teaching overseas in China. Before moving to Vermont to accept the assistant principal’s job in Essex last year he served for two years as a dean at a charter high school in San Francisco.
While Maylor will be new to Barre’s school system, Aither is familiar with the school, the students and the staff at Spaulding, as well as the greater Barre community.
Aither spent four years as a behavior specialist and special educator at Spaulding before he was promoted to assistant principal after Hennessey left that job in 2013.
A Lamoille County native, Aither received his bachelor’s degree from what is now Castleton University in 2003 and his master’s degree from what is now Northern Vermont University – Johnson in 2009.
Aither worked for Washington County Mental Health Services for three years before joining the staff at Spaulding.
The selection of Aither and Maylor to serve as co-principals at Spaulding during the coming school year represents the latest in a series of administrative hires — some of which are tied to Hennessey’s recent promotion to superintendent.
Last year Hennessey, who at the time was employed as co-principal of Barre City Elementary and Middle School, stepped in as interim superintendent in the aftermath of David Wells’ abrupt resignation. Following a formal search, Hennessey was offered the superintendent’s job earlier this year.
Hennessey was replaced as co-principal at Barre City Elementary and Middle School by the school’s assistant principal Pierre Laflamme. Following a search, Laflamme was recently named as co-principal and will be joined in the fall by Waterhouse.
A separate search for the assistant principal’s job Olivia Kane was hired to fill on an interim basis is underway and should conclude soon.
Hennessey said that is the last piece of an administrative team that has undergone on overhaul in recent weeks thanks to a mix of in-house promotions, out of district hires, and Waterhouse’s decision to switch schools.
Karen Fredricks recently was promoted capping the search for a new curriculum coordinator and the district’s new director of early childhood education — Elizabeth Brown — is currently employed as director of the Head Start program in Rutland.
With all but one of the administrative positions now filled, Hennessey is feeling better about navigating a fiercely competitive hiring climate than he was a month ago.
“I’ve got to build the strongest leadership team I can for Barre and, suddenly, things are looking really, really good for us.”
david.delcore @timesargus.com
