To start out the new year, Philip Barbour High School has a new principal, Traci Knight. Mrs. Knight took the place of the former principal, Karen Finamore, and is the third principal the Senior class has seen since they started High School.
Mrs. Knight previously came from Elkins. She has lived in Elkins all of her life, although she was born in Pennsylvania. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins. Then she received her Master’s degree from Salem University. She is currently working on her doctorate at Marshall University.
Previously, Mrs. Knight was the math coordinator for Randolph County Schools.
She says that in her last job she worked only with math teachers, and one major change between her past position and the new position is that she has to work with a larger group of teachers, and also teachers from not only the math field but from all fields, including sciences, histories, language arts, music, special education, and a career and technical school. This sounds like an overwhelming task, but Mrs. Knight says that she is currently trying to adjust herself to dealing with and accommodating the teachers of a large high school. She says that the hardest problem that she has come across in her daily work is simply dealing with the day-to-day tasks of being a principal. A big help to this change was the warm welcome that everyone gave her upon her arrival. Getting to know her way around the school, getting to know the people that she works with, and moving into a new school system can be challenging.
On the first day of classes Mrs. Knight, spoke in front of the entire student and faculty body. Now that everybody knows who she is, she just has to get to personally know who everyone else is. Something she wants all of the students to know is that education is the most valuable thing you can have. It is important to work hard and not give up, to keep working because it will pay off in the end.
As for making changes within the school, Mrs. Knight says that she is not going to make any major changes to the way the school runs until she gets a feel of how it was run before she was there. It is important to see what works until you change it. One change that was made was the cell phone policy at Philip Barbour. Last year the policy was that cells phones could only be used before and after classes. To discourage usage during classes, this year the policy is that cell phones can be used both before and after school, between classes, and during lunch.
Mrs. Knight plans to accomplish a few goals by the end of the school year. Last year Philip Barbour made AYP, or Advanced Yearly Progress. Mrs. Knight hopes that this will be true for this coming year. Also, she plans to establish a relationship with the students. Since Mrs. Traci Knight’s first concern is the students, she will make a good addition to Philip Barbour.