By STEPHANIE BUNKER
Moapa Valley Progress
Big changes are underway for the schools in Moapa Valley. Ute Perkins Elementary School Principal Ken Paul is excited to be filling the position as principal at W. Mack Lyon Middle School in Overton. He will be replacing Rod Adams who has taken the position of principal at Moapa Valley High School.
On June 14, Paul got official confirmation that he had landed the Principal job at the middle school. He had gone through a series of three interviews, which he thought to be unusual.
The first interview was with his boss and 2 other academic management staff, the second consisted of a representative group at Mack Lyon with teachers, parents, and support staff. Paul was the only candidate to be scheduled for the 3rd interview with the superintendent Pat Skorkowsky and the Associate Superintendent Mike Barton.
Paul has been in the Clark County School District for 16 years. Paul said that there is a special place in his heart for Mack Lyon because it is where he began his career as a teacher.
“It was at that same school that I went straight from a teacher to an administrator as the Dean of Students,” Paul recalled.
For the past 6 years Paul has been the Principal at Perkins Elementary School in Moapa. He said he ended up in the elementary world because there was an open position and he wanted to stay within a rural community.
Paul is thankful for his experiences at Perkins because he got to see how kids learn from early childhood to 5th grade.
Paul said that he hadn’t planned on leaving Perkins anytime soon. In fact he expected to be there at least a couple more years.
“When the position came open it shocked me that I was drawn to it,” he said.
Paul’s vision for his future career at Mack Lyon is to tighten the gap between the transition from elementary school to middle school.
“I feel like there is a disconnect between the elementary and secondary worlds because of all the different programs,” Paul said.
Because he has experience with middle school and elementary school he feels he can make a difference in that area.
Paul has also been studying Mack Lyon and looking for the reasons why they have become such a great school.
“I like to focus on the principals of what makes an organization work,” he said. “Lyon is already considered a 5 star school and I want to sustain that status. But to sustain that I have to know what it is that makes it that way.”
In Paul’s research he has compared the School Performance Framework tests (SPF) for Mack Lyon and Hughes Middle School in Mesquite. He made the observation that in 2011 they were both 3 star schools according to the CCSD grading system. But in 2012 Lyon bumped up to a 5 star school while Hughes has remained the same and even digressed slightly.
After looking into what made the difference, Paul noticed two things: that Mack Lyon has put a great effort into helping the struggling readers, and they have made some drastic improvements in in math as well.
Paul sent out a Parent Link phone call to his staff at Perkins last week, informing them of the news. Then he sent out another mass phone call to the parents. He plans on using Parent Link to communicate with the parents at Mack Lyon sometime during the summer.
