Corona del Mar principal search to continue
Danette Goulet
CORONA DEL MAR -- School district officials will not settle for second
best after the front runner for the principal position at Corona del Mar
High School suddenly backed out last week.
Instead they will replace the current interim principal, Gary Norton,
with yet another interim principal next year and take applications all
over again, said Jaime Castellanos, assistant superintendent of secondary
education for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.
“We’re going to go with an interim again,” he said. “We were set to
make a site visit on the No. 1 candidate and he pulled out for personal
reasons. The second, basically, I interviewed this week and we decided to
open it up again.”
The Sea Kings have been without a permanent principal since January,
when after seven years at Corona del Mar Don Martin took a trial job at
the district office.
Less than two months later, Martin left the district and took a
position in the St. Helena Unified School District in Northern California
as the director of curriculum and instruction.
Martin was the last in a run of principals who left or retired from
their jobs during the past couple of years.
During that span, 10 principals left their posts.
Since his departure from Corona del Mar, retired principal Gary Norton
has run the show. Students have grumbled that Norton was strict and
gruff, but parents lauded the interim principal’s administrative style as
no nonsense.
But Norton has another assignment for several months in the fall, so
while the district would like to keep him on they will need to find yet
another temporary leader, Castellanos said.
“We’ll be looking at getting an interim principal on board again this
summer,” Castellanos said. “We’ll open the position again in October,
November and see what quality we find. If we don’t find the quality we’re
looking for we’ll open it again in the spring.”
All the latest on Orange County from Orange County.
Get our free TimesOC newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Daily Pilot.