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Assistant principal selection raises stir
By BARBARA BEHRENDT, Times Staff Writer CRYSTAL RIVER -- Earl Bramlett, Crystal River High School's longtime football coach and current activities director, is expected to become the school's new assistant principal, a move that has several School Board members crying foul. The board members are concerned that the appointment will discourage younger educators from seeking administrative positions and that the duties of two full-time positions will be too much for Bramlett, 63, to handle. "The biggest disappointment is that we have been trying to put young people into these assistant principal positions so that they can be groomed to become high school principals," said board member Patience Nave. The board members said they were notified around 9 a.m. Thursday that Bramlett will be recommended for the job by superintendent David Hickey at the Feb. 12 board meeting. Later in the day, however, district personnel director Steve Richardson said that no formal recommendation has been made. Hickey did not return repeated phone calls. Four of the five board members expressed concerns about the appointment and several spoke directly to Hickey about the selection. Crystal River principal Stephen Myers chose Bramlett from among 11 applicants. With a number of principals nearing the ends of their careers, the district needs a pool of qualified applicants for leadership roles, Nave said. "And now we're putting in someone who is at the end of their career," she said. That view was echoed by board member Sandra "Sam" Himmel. "Mr. Hickey has expressed to us over and over again about the employee shortages . . . especially the administrative shortages that we're going to have," she said. Himmel said she would hate for the qualified young applicants who have been preparing to move into administration to get discouraged and not apply for positions because of this recommendation. Himmel, Nave and board members Carol Snyder and Ginger Bryant also said they were concerned that Myers may allow Bramlett to continue in his job as activities director even as he became a school administrator. "I . . . have a concern because the activities director takes up a lot of time," Himmel said. "It's a totally different responsibility than our assistant principals. . . . That takes up a lot of time, too." "I don't think we should have an athletic director who is also an assistant principal," Nave said. "The activities director has a great deal of responsibility . . . I don't think he should have both jobs. I think he should choose." Traditionally, a school's activities director handles scheduling and operating the many athletic and extracurricular activities at a school and oversees eligibility for athletic participants. Assistant principals perform a variety of jobs but the position at Crystal River would primarily handle discipline. Snyder said that keeping the duties of activities director would be a huge distraction for anyone also working as an assistant principal. Bryant said she has known Bramlett for years and believes he would be a good disciplinarian for the school. However, she agreed that he should not be allowed to do both jobs. "He has to decide one or the other. Not both," she said. "I don't want him to have more than he can handle." Keeping the activities director job would also mean more money for Bramlett. His base salary is $46,892 and the activities director gets a supplement of $3,680. As an assistant principal with three years of experience, which Bramlett has from Georgia, his salary would climb to $51,800. If he continued as activities director job, he would also get the $3,680 supplment. Bramlett declined to comment on Thursday. Nave spoke with Myers about Bramlett on Thursday morning and he did not say whether he would or would not keep Bramlett as activities director. Myers did not return repeated phone calls. Nave said she asked Hickey why he recommended Bramlett and was told it was the principal's choice and that Hickey would not go against the principal's wishes. Board Chairwoman Pat Deutschman didn't have any direct concerns about the appointment but she said there had been discussions about moving someone into the job on an interim basis until the end of the school year. Instead, officials decided to post the job as a regular position. Despite Richardson's assertion that no formal recommendation has been made, Deutschman said that a recommendation is on the written agenda for the Feb. 12 meeting, an agenda that she reviewed with Hickey on Thursday afternoon. The formal recommendation is important because under state law once a person is recommended to the board, that person has a vested right to the job. The board cannot reject a recommendation except for cause. The assistant principal position became vacant when Hugh Adkins was appointed as the new director of the Marine Science Station, which becomes effective today. Bramlett has been in the education and coaching business in Florida and Georgia for 38 years. He came to Crystal River to teach and coach from 1971 through 1975, then returned in 1985. He stepped down from his head coaching job in 2000 but retained the activities director position. -- Times staff writer Carey Freeman contributed to this report.
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