Anthony Principal

For the past month your local UTLA leadership has been in negotiations with the Local District 3 office (LD3) regarding the hiring process for our new principal. In the previous hiring process a committee of teachers, parents, students, staff, and a UTLA rep interviewed candidates and made final recommendation to the LD3 Superintendent. UTLA wanted to ensure that the same process we have used in the last hire was honored and repeated this time.

Ideally we want more power than just a recommendation and we would like for the committee to be more than only 5 people from the school site. This is the idea behind the waiver that we submitted and are waiting to hear back about. But until we get approved for such a process we needed to continue to fight for a more inclusive procedure instead of one where we have no say at all and the LD3 Superintendent makes the final decision.

After weeks of back and forth conversations the local UTLA chapter and LD3 finally reached an agreement to put in place an interview committee that would be made up of members from both School Site Council (SSC) and School Based Management (SBM). We also wanted to make sure that those serving on the committee represented all 3 tracks. The final members of the hiring committee and the review of interview questions were decided on at a local UTLA chapter steering committee meeting. The Interview Committee members were: Ms. Reyna Paredes (SBM Parent), Eldrick Bone (SBM Student A Track President), Ms. L. Conley (SBM B-Track Teacher), Ms. L Covington (SSC C-Track Teacher), Ms. F. Perez (SSC UTLA Co-Chair) and 2 school directors from LD3 including Susan Allen.

We met for two days and interviewed 4 candidates: Bob De Pietro (AP Marshall HS), Roberta Mailman (SIF LAUSD), John Plevack (AP SSS Byrd MS), and Elena Anthony (AP LAHS). At 5:49pm Friday May 25th the interview committee recommended Ms. Elena Anthony for hire to LD3. Saturday afternoon Susan Allen made a phone call to both Ms. Anthony and Ms. Perez acknowledging the official hire of Ms. Anthony as our new Principal for next year.

The local UTLA leadership would like to thank all the members of the interview committee for their time and also those members who attended the last 2 UTLA meetings to give their input on the process.