Update on Interim Principal Search as Trustees Visit Campus

As the 2017-18 academic year comes to a close, the role of the Interim Principal remains undesignated. The trustees, headed by President of the Trustees Tony Downer ’75, will return to campus this weekend.

The Exonian previously reported that the trustees hoped to select one of three candidates—Director of Student Well-Being Christina Palmer, Head of the Doane Stuart School Pamela Clarke and former Academy trustee and alumnus William Rawson ’71—by the end of the month.

The trustees’ arrival on campus marks the beginning of “considerable time meeting with Principal [Lisa] MacFarlane and her leadership team,” Downer said. The trustees will also meet with Robert Greene, the school’s outside consultant on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and will celebrate the giving of the Founders’ Day Award as well as attend the memorial service for recently-passed fellow-trustee Kerry Landreth Reed.

Additionally, the trustees will attend sessions devoted to strategic planning and foundational committee work that concentrates on the student experience, including faculty and staff workload, the school’s infrastructure and finances.

Although their on-campus work does not seem to include deliberations on the Interim Principal, Downer said he anticipates that “the selection and the announcement...will be in the very near future.”