Administrative Reshuffle For Soulsbyville School District
Soulsbyville, CA — With school starting up again in just a few short weeks on Aug. 23, the Soulsbyville School District is still shuffling seats within its administration.
As reported here, Soulsbyville Superintendent Jeff Winfield, who had previously split his services between Soulsbyville and Twain Harte school districts, has formally shed his responsibilities with the latter. Thursday afternoon, in a special 4 p.m. closed session meeting, Twain Harte district officials anticipate finalizing a contract for half-time superintendent services with Rick Hennes, a retired educator who has locally worked for Curtis Creek School District.
As Winfield explains, “It was that the level of service that my home district — Soulsbyville — wanted to increase some more of my time on-campus…so we originally had an MOU that would go forward for possible approval that included a little less time for Twain Harte. Obviously [Twain Harte officials] are probably feeling and thinking the same thing — that they are wanting more service and not less. So this is a good way to handle that – bring on somebody else just for Twain Harte that is a part-time person, who would just be servicing the Twain Harte District.”
Taylor Transitions To 5th Grade Teacher
Longtime Soulsbyville Principal Bart Taylor is also transitioning into a new role within a teaching classification. He will become a fifth grade educator, according to Winfield, who further admits a fondness for teaching that grade level. Still in the process of filling the vacancy created by Taylor’s desire to move into another role, Winfield says the district is not sweating over it.
In fact, he confides, “What we may have the luxury of doing — we do have a couple of staff members who either have their administrative credential or are going into an intern program — so we have, already in-house, people that we will probably look to for this first year, since it is so late.”
Winfield recalls that, when budgets suddenly became tighter several years back, while still serving as superintendent, he and Taylor initiated sharing duties as principal; Taylor additionally served as the district’s main operations-transportation manager. “We just did not use those titles because they are confusing to people,” Winfield chuckles. From his own experience, he considers teaching “a wonderful wonderful job.” He adds, with a slightly wistful tinge, “If I could make as much money I would likely teach to do that, but to do the harder administrative work, you get paid a little bit more.”
