District 54 finishes hiring principals for next year

With the school board's approval of two more new principals, Schaumburg Township Elementary District 54 has all but finished its hiring of upper administrators for next school year.

This week, the board named Danette Meyer as the next principal of MacArthur Elementary in Hoffman Estates. Meyer is the district's current dual-modern language coordinator.

And joining the district for the first time in August as the new principal of Mead Junior High in Elk Grove Village will be Amy Read, current dean of students at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire.

The only remaining vacancies among administrative positions are the language coordinator job Meyer is leaving and a few assistant principal posts, district spokeswoman Terri McHugh said.

But a nearly winter-long chain of new hires and staff reshuffling is approaching its conclusion with these two appointments.

More than a dozen of next year's principals and upper administrators at the 27-school district will be new to their positions.

"I would say (that is) higher than usual," McHugh said.

But it was all set in motion by the retirement of just four administrators.

"Four retirees is not an extraordinary number," McHugh said. "But when you promote from within, it causes a lot of changes."

Meyer succeeds Yolanda Valdes, who's leaving MacArthur to become the first director of staff support for District 54.

Meyer has been in her current position 2003.

Before joining District 54, she was a bilingual teacher at Maine West High School in Des Plaines, Fenton High School in Bensenville and the Illinois Resource Center in Des Plaines.

Before becoming dean at Stevenson High School, Read was also a teacher and coach at the Lincolnshire school as well as algebra team leader and co-director of the freshman mentor program.

Prior to coming to Stevenson in 1996, Read spent two years as a math teacher at Proviso West High School in Hillside.