Barren County schools begin process of hiring new high school principal

By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1

The search for the new Barren County High School principal has officially begun with the district publicizing, and soliciting applications for the soon-to-be vacant position, though it won’t be filled before 15 days.

Currently the administrative position of the high school principal is held by Amy Irwin, who has served as the school’s principal since the 2019 academic year. Recently, however, on June 4, Irwin was announced as the new Barren County superintendent during a special-called meeting of the district’s Board of Education. She will take over from Superintendent Bo Matthews — who, after 13 years in the position, announced his retirement in Feb. 2024 — on July 1.

Heather Gardner, District Communications Officer, said via email that the process to fill the position will begin “as soon as possible.” The principal position was officially listed on the district’s job listing website on June 5 along with numerous others — including the Trojan Academy principal position, an assistant principal position and a plethora of teaching and after school positions.

As Gardner explains the “principal selection process” requires as the first step that the position “must be posted 15 days before a principal is chosen.” Using this requirement the soonest possible date for a new BCHS principal hire in June 20. Matthews said, the second step will likely take a decent amount of time — though he said it would likely be done in tandem with the advertisement. The second step entails that “members of the site-based council receive principal selection training.” According to the high school website the site-based decision council consists of teachers Samantha Huffman, Kelley Bauer and Alison Prichard as well as parents Justin Kirkpatrick, Stephanie Prichard and Jay Coleman.

“We’ve posted the superintendent job, and that will remain posted for 15 days in the midst of that we will be contacting the current SBDM council about training; there’s a training requirement that has to be done and we’ve been reaching out to SBDM training facilitator for the purpose of hiring [the] principal,” Matthews said. “We don’t have any training dates as of yet.”

After that step the process becomes akin to the superintendent search, though not as lengthy, with Matthews, or a designee of his — which will likely be Irwin as the incoming chief executive, Matthews said — and the council will begin determining whom they wish to interview from the applications they received during the 15 span of the advertisement. The top candidates are then interviewed and evaluated.

The new high school principal will then be decided by a majority vote before being submitted to the superintendent for approval.

As of right now the school is too early in the process to have any names of potential principals.

“I’d say right now it’ll probably be at the end of the month,” Matthews said.