Superintendent chooses assistant

Pete Kelly names Linda Kelley, the district's planning director, his new assistant superintendent.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 11, 2000

INVERNESS -- Just call the school district's operations team Kelly and Kelley.

On Monday, Superintendent Pete Kelly announced that he has chosen the district's planning director, Linda Kelley, as his new assistant superintendent. He will make that recommendation to the School Board this afternoon.

Kelley, 52, replaces David Hickey, who will be returning to the job of principal at Crystal River Middle School at the end of June.

She learned of her selection Monday morning when she found a message from the superintendent on her voice mail.

Prior to becoming director of planning and development in June, Kelley had worked at Floral City Elementary School. She came to the school in 1981 after earning her bachelor's degree from the University of Maine. She was a teacher and later curriculum specialist before becoming the Floral City principal in 1988.

Kelley earned her master's degree and her certification in administration and supervision from the University of South Florida.

There originally were six applicants for the job, but one was not interviewed because she did not meet the minimum experience requirements.

"When we went through the interview process, she (Kelley) did very well," Kelly said of his choice. "She is very good at communicating with people; she's worked with the strategic plan; she's been a principal; and she knows how schools work."

In her new role, Kelley will be helping schools put the nuts and bolts of the strategic plan into place. In her work as principal and planning director, she has helped organize the development of that plan. She also has been involved with another district initiative called "Working on the Work" since the beginning.

"She'll be able to work with the schools on that, keeping the students' attention and getting them involved in their classes," Kelly said.

"Those are the things that I want to be focusing on next year," Kelley said. "I want to be helping principals build that strategic plan into their school improvement plans."

The softspoken former principal said she knew she had a very different style than Hickey, who has never lost his direct, coach-type approach to issues. But she said she looked forward to working with the district's principals.

"My style is a little bit different, but I think I have a good working relationship with all the principals," Kelley said. "I was already on board when a lot of them were hired so I've had the chance to work with a lot of them . . . and I really believe in working as a team."

Kelley will be the third assistant superintendent to Kelly and will be the first woman in the job since it was created 15 years ago.

She will have a somewhat less overwhelming job that Hickey had before her if the School Board approves a shifting of authority which Kelly will also propose at today's meeting.

In the past, the assistant superintendent supervised all the district's school principals as well as the educational services department at the county office. Under Kelly's proposal, the responsibility for overseeing educational services would shift to a new position -- the executive director of educational services.

In exchange, the current position of director of curriculum and instruction would be deleted. Kelly said the current person in that job, Tom Curry, would likely be placed into the new executive director's job. All those changes would take place at the end of June, if approved by the board.

"That's going to take a lot of the load off the assistant superintendent," Kelly said. "Overseeing 20 schools and a big department is a lot to do."

For budgetary reasons, Kelly has also proposed eliminating the position of executive director of management services after the current person in the job, Roberta Long, can be relocated in a school principalship. She had asked for that change more than a year ago, and Kelly promised her this year that she would return to a school setting.

No school principalships are open.

Kelly also will recommend today that Jean Reed become the new director of exceptional student education July 1. Reed is currently coordinator of exceptional student education and will replace Neal Weiss, who is retiring at the end of June.

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