When Kathrine McCarthy walks through the doors next August as the new principal at Lincoln School, folks there may not recognize the name, but they’ll sure know the face.
That’s because McCarthy was a part-time assistant principal at the Brookfield school two years ago -back when her last name was Schumann (she married over winter break this school year).
McCarthy will replace Melissa Ingram, who submitted her resignation in March. Ingram has been principal at Lincoln School for the past five years. She’s leaving to serve as principal of Schafer School in Villa Park District 45.
“Everybody is thrilled,” said Ingram regarding the reaction to the announcement that McCarthy was returning to Lincoln. “The teachers loved her and the parents loved her. She was outstanding.”
Hired in 2006-07 after receiving her master’s degree in administration from Loyola University, McCarthy served as an assistant principal at both Lincoln and at George Washington Middle School for a year.
“It was nice to get the K-8 experience right off the bat,” McCarthy said.
Beginning last school year, McCarthy has worked full time at the middle school, where she heads up the athletic program and student activities, does staff evaluations, scheduling and is the administrative liaison for the reading and math intervention programs.
She was on the search committee charged with identifying candidates for the principal’s job at the middle school and has worked closely with Principal Michael Kent on staff development there.
“At George Washington Middle School we’ve been focusing on staff development and developing a healthy climate and culture in the building,” said McCarthy. “I’ve definitely learned strategies to help with faculty and school improvement plans.”
McCarthy said that she wants to continue to open lines of communication with parents and teachers at Lincoln School. In addition, she wants to make sure the school is doing all it can to reach students for whom English is not their native language.
The percentage of Hispanic students at Lincoln School has grown from 25.4 percent in 2001 to 55.5 percent in 2008, according to Illinois State Board of Education’s school report cards from those years.
“At Lincoln we’ll be looking at the English Language Learner population to make sure we’re getting them appropriate services and exiting them out of that program properly,” McCarthy said.
Other areas of attention will be to get more parent involvement in the school’s PTA and looking at data to see how the school can increase achievement, especially getting more students to exceed state standards on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test.
“Katie has always impressed me as a bright person who knows a lot about education,” said District 103 Superintendent Michael Warner. “When she was announced as the finalist to the Lincoln staff, there was a lot of excitement. They are very happy to have her as principal.”
Asked what McCarthy’s salary will be to lead Lincoln School, Warner said that the school board had not set administrators’ salaries for the 2009-10 school year.