 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Gulf High School principal says goodbye
By MICHELE MILLER, Times Staff Writer NEW PORT RICHEY -- Cheryl Renneckar was a day away from retiring and wondering when it was going to finally sink in. "It just feels like I'm going on vacation," Renneckar said Thursday, sitting in her half-packed office at Gulf High School. "I don't think it will set in until after I'm gone two weeks and I don't come back. Or maybe it will hit me when I'm drinking my morning coffee on the first day of school and watching the school buses roll on out of my neighborhood." After 33 years in education -- the past 11 spent as principal of Gulf High School -- Cheryl Renneckar has decided to turn her keys in. It was a decision she had been mulling for some time. "It's more and more difficult to find personal time and I always believed you should leave when people still want you, when you still know you have something to give," said Renneckar, 54. Also playing a part in her decision, she said, has been the past year she spent as a care giver for a friend with cancer. "That helped me put things in perspective," Renneckar said. "Sixty-hour work weeks are the norm around here. I'm tired. It's time." Renneckar's last day was Friday. Not wanting to be perceived as a lame duck principal, and wanting to make sure she didn't take the spotlight away from her graduating students, Renneckar waited until a few days after graduation to inform the faculty that she wouldn't be back next year. "We're all sad, but we're happy, too," said Gulf High occupational specialist Kathy Trapp, who has worked with Renneckar for nine years. "When a person has worked that hard for so many years, you just have to be happy for them. She was a great principal. She really let the teachers do their jobs. You always felt that she was behind you. "She also really liked the students. She really had their best interest at heart. I often thought that if she wasn't a principal, she would have made a great guidance counselor." Renneckar, whose dream was once to enter the U.S. Naval Academy -- "I was told I couldn't do that" -- worked as a physical education teacher and athletic coach in Illinois and Pasco County before taking a position in 1975 as a PE teacher and assistant principal at Springstead High School in Spring Hill. In 1985 she was recruited to be an assistant principal at Ridgewood High School. In 1991 she moved to Gulf High as the first woman to be named principal of an academic high school in Pasco County. She was a trailblazer, said Pasco schools superintendent John Long. "She was an advocate for Gulf High. She was rough as nails. She was a good leader," Long said. "She was a really good disciplinarian. She believed in her school. She believed in those kids. She fought for her kids to have the same opportunities that other kids had at other newer schools." That wasn't always easy. Over the years Gulf High has garnered a reputation that hasn't always been favorable. "When I came here, the faculty had a reputation for how many principals they had run off," said Renneckar, who at 11 years holds the record for the longest tenure in the school's history. "I've seen a lot of changes," Renneckar said. "I went from having to type referrals on a typewriter to be able to access all the students' schedules in a hand-held computer." The opening of River Ridge and Mitchell high schools that drew Gulf High students and faculty, along with a school choice policy, proved difficult. "Losing those students and those teachers really hurt our programs here. When Mitchell opened, I had to let go 25 teachers. That was really hard because I hired those teachers," Renneckar said. "Unfortunately there's a misperception by American society that newer is better -- that low socioeconomics somehow translates in low academic performances. "What's truly important in a school is what happens in a classroom between the student and teacher. Low socioeconomics doesn't mean that you can't learn. We've had our share of National Merit students. We have students that qualify for free and reduced lunch that are doing well -- one in particular that's at (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). I know some of our graduates will go out there and be leaders." This year Gulf High students garnered $129,000 in local scholarships -- the second highest total in the district. But the school also garnered a "D" grade from the state. "I was devastated. It broke my heart," Renneckar said. "I'm for raising standards, but I don't see how you do that by giving a test on one day of a kid's life. By three or four students' scores, we got a D. The lowest 25 percent of our students improved their scores by 46 percent -- but that wasn't good enough. The state wanted 50 percent." "We have the highest population of ESOL students (English Speakers of Other Languages) in West Pasco," said Renneckar, adding that she would like to have that taken into consideration. "I think we should have an even playing field." Despite the D grade, Renneckar said, "Gulf High is in good shape." She points to the success stories. Her school was a pilot for the senior project program, which has been implemented in some form in other Pasco high schools. Gulf also was the first to launch a diversity training program -- called "Camp Anytown" -- that Gulf students then presented at other high schools. The school's Web site, under the care of math teacher Jeff Miller, is likely the best in the county, Renneckar said. There have also been physical plant improvements. A technology retro-fit that began the year she arrived should finally be complete at the start of the coming school year, as well as the completion of a new athletic field. That's good news for former Hudson Middle School principal Thomas Imerson, who on Monday will start his job as the new principal at Gulf. Including administrative positions at Ridgewood and Gulf High, Imerson and Renneckar worked together for 15 years. That should make the transition easier, both say. The two share the same birthday, and, they say, basically the same administrative style. "When he left for Hudson Middle, I told him I felt like we were getting a divorce and I didn't want one," Renneckar said. "I feel like I'm leaving Gulf High in good hands." Imerson says that while he enjoyed his 16-month stay at Hudson Middle, he's looking forward to taking over at Gulf. "I like the hustle and bustle and the challenges of high school," he said. As for Renneckar, she'll certainly miss the school, the faculty and especially the students. "I just love teenagers," she said. "You get them as ninth-graders and when you graduate them as seniors, you don't want to let them go." "The real joys," Renneckar said, "are the kids that come back, The kids that write you thank you notes, the parents that write you thank you notes, that's what keeps you going." Still, she's looking forward to retirement, a planned fall foliage trip to New England and taking on a new kind of challenge. "I love to golf," Renneckar said with a grin. "I'm going after that elusive hole-in-one."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From today's Pasco Times |
