Baker principal shakeup OK’d

• By CHUCK HUSMYRE
• Special to The Advocate
• Published: Nov 4, 2009 - Page: 1B

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BAKER — The Baker School Board accepted the resignation Tuesday of one principal and transferred two other principals as part of a staff shakeup that angered several teachers in the audience.

The resignation of Baker Middle School Principal Charles E. Johnson was effective Tuesday, but Johnson had been on paid leave for more than three weeks.

Johnson was placed on leave following the recent arrests of five Baker Middle School students in two separate incidents.

On Oct. 9, Baker police booked three students with on-campus weapons violations after one student and one teacher were shot with a BB gun. Two of the arrested students were 15; the third was 14.

On Sept. 21, two 15-year-old students were booked with aggravated arson after they allegedly started a fire in a girls’ restroom.

Superintendent Estes Taplin’s decision to replace Johnson with Baker Heights Elementary Principal Earl Langlois upset some of the Baker Heights faculty.

At least a dozen Baker Heights teachers attended Tuesday’s meeting. Although none of the teachers addressed the board directly, they voiced enough audible disapproval from the public gallery that Board President Pam Malveaux threatened to order the removal of anyone who disrupted the meeting.

In addition to approving the transfer of Langlois, the board accepted Taplin’s recommendation to move Principal Samantha Williams from Bakerfield Elementary to Baker Heights, and to appoint Marilyn Brown as interim principal of Bakerfield.

Brown had been working as a contract consultant for the School Board.

The board voted 4-1 to approve the transfers, with board member Jane Freudenberger voting against the measure.

Prior to the vote, board member George Gallman said that although the superintendent has his full support, Gallman was concerned about how students would be affected by assigning new principals to three of the system’s five schools.

“It seems to me you could accomplish the same thing without moving so many people around,” Gallman said.

Gallman added that he would have preferred to discuss the planned personnel shifts with Taplin before the superintendent submitted them to the board for approval. “I wish he would communicate a little more,” Gallman said.