District officials planned to transfer Highland Lakes Elementary's popular vice principal to another school.
By KELLY VIRELLA
Published September 4, 2003
[Times photos: Douglas R. Clifford]
Students ride to school past a protest that turned into a victory rally after supporters learned they had raised enough money to keep vice principal Larry Slyck at Highland Lakes Elementary. The district had planned to transfer him.
Highland Lakes Elementary vice principal Larry Slyck grins as he answers questions from the media Wednesday morning at the school.
PALM HARBOR - Larry Slyck's supporters gathered on a grassy knoll in front of Highland Lakes Elementary School Wednesday morning, cheering and hoisting handmade posters. Parents in a bumper-to-bumper line of cars dropping off children also honked and cheered.
The crowd of 30 or so had originally planned to protest the school district's plan to transfer Slyck, Highland Lakes Elementary School's beloved assistant principal, to a school with more poor and learning disabled children this week.
But this was not a protest. It was a victory rally.
Parents and Highland Lakes principal Carolyn Sinclair had put together Tuesday the $41,000 that the school district said it would take to cover a little more than half the cost of keeping Slyck at Highland Lakes for the rest of the school year.
At the end of Wednesday's rally, Slyck strode out to greet the crowd, grinning and trembling with excitement.
"Thank you, thank you," he said. "Thank you for the community support. I'm glad I got to stay."
The Pinellas County school district can only afford to have assistant principals at 55 of its 82 elementary schools. So every year district officials use a formula to determine which schools need an assistant principal the most.
The schools that qualify have the most students and the highest concentrations of students who get a free or reduced price lunch, take special education classes or take the bus to school.
District officials told Sinclair last week that Highland Lakes had fallen to No. 56 on that list and would lose its funding for an assistant principal this week.
But nine local donors, many of them parents, as well as the PTA and Sinclair pulled together the money they needed from a variety of sources.
All that money, plus the $30,000 that the district had planned to give Highland Lakes to hire a curriculum or training specialist in lieu of an assistant principal, will be enough to keep Slyck at Highland Lakes this school year.
Sinclair said she was relieved.
"He's visible, he's fair, he's knowledgeable, he impacts children all day long," she said. "We're glad the community and school could come up with a solution."
Slyck has been at Highland Lakes for seven years and is just too valuable to let go, said Nancy Olson, 45, a Palm Harbor resident who has two children at Highland Lakes.
"He's a very hands-on, open-door policy vice principal," Olson said. "If you ever have any questions about anything going on at the school, go to him and he'll have the answers."
More than 30 parents called the district to complain, and some began organizing to raise the money the school would need to keep the assistant principal.
Julie Peluso, 46, a Palm Harbor resident whose son attends Highland Lakes took charge over the Labor Day weekend, calling and e-mailing parents to notify them of the district's plan.
Pretty soon, the idea of a protest emerged.
Peluso printed 1,000 fliers announcing the protest and got parents and friends to help her distribute them. She also got on the phone and began calling local politicians and business leaders. Tuesday night, Sinclair called her to compare notes. Between the two of them they had it.
Peluso couldn't call off the protest at such a late hour. So the next morning she got up and made new signs to turn the picket line she had planned into a victory rally.
Highland Lakes may not be on the list of schools that get a district-funded assistant principal again next year, Peluso said. But the parents and staff will be ready next year, she said.
"We'll go ahead and make money by doing fundraisers and hopefully work with staff and teachers to come up with a solution," she said. " Because we don't want to do this again next year."
