Eight Fox C-6 School District schools will have either a new principal or assistant principal when classes resume in August, and two of the schools will have new leaders in both spots.
Jennifer Fritz, the assistant principal at Guffey Elementary School, has been promoted to principal at Fox Elementary School.
She will replace Lisa Sell, who has been Fox Elementary’s principal since 2005, and is retiring June 30. Sell is being paid $133,774.31 this school year.
Fritz will be paid $113,000 as principal next school year after receiving a $98,647.87 salary as assistant principal.
Dustin Brown, an assistant principal at Seckman High School, has been named the next principal at Hodge Elementary School. He replaces Theresa Janson, who has been the Hodge principal since 2007. Janson is being paid $129,876.50 this school year.
Brown will earn a $113,000 annual salary as Hodge’s principal. He is being paid $100,459.80 as an assistant principal.
The official last day for principals and assistant principals who are retiring or leaving is today, June 30, which is the final day of the 2021-2022 school year.
All the new principals and assistant principals will start their new jobs Friday, July 1.
The Board of Education members voted unanimously during closed meetings on Feb. 1, March 15 and May 17 to promote or hire the new principals and assistant principals.
Assistant principals
Holly Dreher, a special education teacher at Fox Elementary, will replace Fritz as assistant principal at Guffey.
Dreher, who has worked in the district since August 2006, will be paid $80,000 as an assistant principal at Guffey next school year, nearly $9,000 more than her current $71,004 salary.
At Seckman High Trent Sauer and Daniel Bieser will step into the assistant principal roles, replacing Brown, who is going to be the Hodge Elementary principal, and David Black, who is retiring. Black is being paid $126,108.41 this school year.
Saur, an assistant principal at Senn-Thomas Middle School in the Dunklin R-5 School District, will be paid $98,000 at Seckman High.
Bieser, who has worked for the Independence School District for 12 years and has been the activities director at Truman High School since 2019, will be paid $104,358 at Seckman High.
Casey Tinker will join Fritz as a new leader at Fox Elementary, taking over as assistant principal at that school after serving as an assistant principal at Hillsboro Elementary School.
Tinker will replace John McNeill, who is retiring. She will be paid $80,997 for the 2022-2023 school year. McNeill is being paid $93,862.24.
Sara Helm will be part of the new leadership team at Hodge Elementary, working as an assistant principal. She is replacing Christine Simokaitis, who is retiring. Simokaitis earns $98,647.87 this school year.
Helm, who has been a teacher at Clyde Hamrick Elementary School since 2004, will be paid $80,000 as an assistant principal at Hodge next school year. She is earning a $64,459 annual salary as a third-grade teacher this school year.
Rachel Sauer, who teaches math and coaches the softball team at Fox High School, has been promoted to assistant principal at the school, taking over for retiring Mike Reese.
Sauer will receive a $98,000 salary as an assistant principal after making $54,729 as a teacher this year. Reese is paid $127,048.08 this year.
Mark Weller will be the next assistant principal at Fox Middle School, taking over for Kevin Griffin, who is leaving for a job at another school district. Griffin is being paid $82,008 this school year.
Weller has worked for 25 years in the Ferguson-Florissant School District and currently is a health and physical education teacher, but he previously served as an assistant principal and the director of the district’s Mark Twain Restoration Center. He will be paid $88,348 as an assistant principal at Fox Middle.
Lisa Brake, a science teacher at Fox High since 2007, has been named the next assistant principal at Antonia Middle School, replacing Maria Bielik, who was promoted to Fox’s director of data and assessment.
Brake will be paid $80,000 at Antonia Middle next school year. Bielik’s salary will be $105,000 as director of data and assessment, after she was paid $93,730.09 as an assistant principal.
Robyn Meagher is leaving her assistant principal job at Sherwood Elementary School to teach math at Fox Middle School, but a new assistant principal for Sherwood had not been named as of Monday at Leader deadline.
Meagher, whose salary is $84,468.24 this school year, will be paid $79,281 next school year as a teacher.
Extra money
Jansen, McNeill, Reese and Sell each will collect an additional $500 when they retire, after Fox school board members agreed in November to offer administrators and teachers a $500 stipend if they informed the district by Dec. 18 that they were leaving. Administrators and teachers who submitted paperwork between Dec. 19 and Jan. 17 will receive $300.
The district said 27 administrators and teachers will receive $500 at the end of this school year, and two will receive $300.
Kelly Bracht, assistant superintendent for human resources, said Fox did not offer the stipend to encourage administrators or teachers to leave the district. Instead, Fox officials asked for early notice in order to have the largest group of candidates to choose from to replace administrators or teachers.
“With the number of available teacher candidates decreasing every year for the past several years, both in Missouri and nationwide, in order to have access to the largest pool of candidates we need to begin posting open positions earlier than ever before,” Bracht told board members at the time.
“This isn’t an incentive to encourage staff to leave; on the contrary, we would really like to see fewer of our staff leaving so that we have fewer vacancies to fill. But for those staff who are planning to retire or resign at the end of this year anyway, this is simply an incentive for them to let us know earlier rather than later.”
She said Fox has about 935 administrative and teaching positions and typically has about 45 people leave those positions at the end of each school year.