Dist. 54 schools get new leaders
Schaumburg Township Elementary District 54 has hired three new principals and a director of staff support, who will begin their jobs at the start of the next school year in August.
Retirements and new administrative positions have prompted a series of new hires and reshuffling of current employees for 2008-09.
Nevertheless, staff changes approved by the school board this week still leave three principal positions and another top administrative job to be filled before August.
Among the changes already approved:
• Laura Rosenblum, assistant principal at Lincoln Prairie School in Hoffman Estates and Link School in Elk Grove Village, will replace Jan Jetel as principal of Collins School in Schaumburg. Jetel is retiring.
• David Negron will succeed Julie Colgrove as principal of Hanover Highlands School in Hanover Park. Colgrove has been appointed director of bilingual-multicultural services for next school year. Negron comes to the district from Joliet, where he's principal at Gompers Junior High.
• Amanda Stochl will become principal at Lincoln Prairie. She'd previously taught at Collins School in District 54 for five years and currently is an assistant principal in Round Lake Area School District 116.
• Current Lincoln Prairie Principal Jake Chung will become principal of Hoover School in Schaumburg this summer when Principal Janean Hansel leaves the district.
• John Schmelzer, principal of Addams Junior High in Schaumburg, will become the Link principal when Barbara Schremser retires in June.
• Principal Steve Pearce of Mead Junior High in Elk Grove Village will succeed Schmelzer at Addams.
• Steve Kern, principal at Schaumburg's Keller Junior High for the past seven years, will move over to Campanelli School in Schaumburg when Vicki Rinehart retires.
• Yolanda Valdes, current principal of MacArthur School in Hoffman Estates, will fill the new position of director of staff support.
• Sonya Whitaker, director of literacy-social sciences, will become director for academic improvement, also a new position.
The shifts leave openings in the principal positions at MacArthur, Keller and Mead as well as for the director of literacy-social sciences.
District 54 operates 27 elementary and junior high schools in the township.