Head of School Mrs. Coreen Hester has officially announced she will be retiring after the 2016-2017 school year. She will be retiring after ten years as ASL’s head of school. The reason she announced this a year and a half in advance is so it allows the board of trustees time to find the next head of school.
The board of trustees has created a committee for finding a new head of school.
They have sent out a survey for all the school to take to see what students, parents, faculty, and staff want in their new head of school. This survey was available for all until March 20 and provided the search committee with important information for their search.
ASL have hired a search firm whose job is to find many different suitable candidates for the new head of school position. They are called Carney Sandoe & Associates, and their representatives have been in and around school while the survey has been available and talking with many people about their opinions.
Next, the group from Carney Sandoe will identify over 100 possible candidates from schools around the world. Out of all of these candidates, the search committee will then create a short-list of eight and then have those interviewed by many different people, hopefully finding the person best suitable for the job.
As of now they haven’t decided specific dates for timing of finding a new head of school but they hope to find one by the end of the calendar year.
Mrs. Hester announced her decision to the middle school students during an assembly on March 19. As part of her talk, she gave three short messages to the students.
The first was for students to think about having a career in teaching. She talked about how teaching has been a great career for her and how it is great to be with children.
Secondly she encouraged students to think about being leaders. She said that she really believed each middle school student had the capability to be a leader in their life, no matter what field they chose. “Leadership is a pretty simple thing. You get a group to go from point A to point B, and if you enjoy cultivating relationships, building teams, and helping things get better, you might want to think about being a leader,” Mrs. Hester said.
The last thing she said to the students was specifically directed to the girls. When Mrs. Hester applied for the job of head of school at ASL, she was on the shortlist of eight different candidates and was the only female. She called the search firm and stated that she was not going to be the token woman of the search and only wanted to go through the process if she had a legitimate chance at the job. She got interviewed and ended up getting the job of course. She told the middle school students that even if you’re a girl in a position that men usually have or are a minority of some sort looking for a job, they should “lean in” and go for it.
“I have all of next year to be your head of school,” said Mrs. Hester as she concluded her remarks. “It’s business as usual, but I did want to say this announcement to you personally, because I care so much.”
