The two West Marin school districts supervised by John Carroll settled on plans to restructure their administrations when he becomes Marin County Superintendent of Schools in the new year. Mr. Carroll will leave behind his split post as superintendent of Lagunitas and Bolinas-Stinson Union School Districts, which have shared a superintendent since 2007, first with Larry Enos, then with Mr. Carroll since 2014.
In January, the principals of both Bolinas-Stinson and Lagunitas will take on the additional role of district superintendent, uncoupling the schools from their longtime joint leadership arrangement.
“It’s a model that gets used in a lot of small districts around California,” said Mr. Carroll, who won the vote for the county’s top schools official in June.
In Bolinas, middle school math teacher Ilie Watterson will become a part-time assistant principal this fall. The school’s current principal, Michelle Stephens, will begin splitting her time between the principal and superintendent roles in the spring. Ms. Watterson, who has taught at Bolinas for four years and led the school’s Covid reopening task force, earned her administrative credential in June. Zachary Metz, who taught in the Miller Creek School District last year, will help fill the gap as Bolinas’s new middle school science teacher in the fall.
Frequent reshuffling of school staff is common in districts like Bolinas, Ms. Watterson said. “The key with small schools is that you have to have an element of flexibility,” she said.
While Ms. Stephens will be hired as the district’s interim superintendent-principal with a contract ending in spring 2024, Lagunitas is taking a long-term approach. Principal Laura Shain is preparing to sign an 18-month contract to become the school’s first superintendent-principal in more than 15 years.
“I think it’s the best idea,” school board president Amos Klausner said. “We all agreed as a board that the superintendent position is certainly not a full-time position.” With enrollment continuing to decline at Lagunitas, Mr. Klausner said, the school needs to shrink its staff too, and both the teachers association and parents would prefer to lose an administrator than a teacher.
Ms. Shain’s salary is not yet public, but the district will certainly save money by employing a joint superintendent-principal.
As the complementary relationship between principal and superintendent disappears, Mr. Klausner said, the board hopes to be more involved in oversight and make decisions like hiring more transparent. “We believe that we can provide that system of checks and balances by getting involved and staying involved,” he said.
Lagunitas is in a transitional period, even apart from the departure of its head administrator. A shrinking student body, particularly in the school’s signature Open Classroom program, spurred soul-searching and calls to combine the two elementary programs. The school sidestepped the merger this summer but hopes to encourage closer ties between the programs. Two recently retired teachers, Larry Nigro and Marlene Maiello, will return to fill a vacant teaching position, and the school hired one new Open Classroom teacher, Jason Coale.