Photo by Jon Anderson
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Cynthia Cruce was named the new principal of Chelsea Middle School by the Shelby County Board of Education on Thursday, June 10, 2021.
The Shelby County Board of Education today named Cynthia Cruce as the new principal at Chelsea Middle School.
Cruce will replace Caroline Obert, who moved to Huntsville due to a job change for her husband.
Cruce is no stranger to Chelsea Middle School. She was an assistant principal there from 2006 to 2012 before transferring to be an assistant principal at Oak Mountain Middle School for the past nine years.
She has 29 years of total experience in education. She began as an English teacher at McAdory High School in 1992 and moved to Oak Mountain High School to teach English and computer applications in 1999 before going to Chelsea Middle School in 2006.
Cruce said she’s excited to return to Chelsea Middle and looks forward to getting reacquainted with the school.
“I can’t go in there and think I know everything about that school,” she said. “I know the school has grown, and the people have changed.”
However, she does still know a lot of the faculty and looks forward to working with them and the assistant principals already in place, she said.
Read more about Cruce in the upcoming July edition of 280 Living.
In other business, the Shelby County Board of Education approved the school system’s academic guide for the 2021-22 school year, including some changes regarding math courses for middle and high school students.
In conjunction with a new math course of study approved at the state level, geometry now will be taught in the ninth grade instead of the 10th grade, said Lynn Carroll, Shelby County’s assistant superintendent for instruction.
Also, the algebra 2 course with trigonometry will become an algebra 2 course with statistics. And instead of offering an algebra 1 course in eighth grade, students now will take accelerated math with elements of algebra 1 in seventh grade and accelerated math in eighth grade, Carroll said.
The school board also today:
- Appointed Russell Leonard as an assistant principal at Calera High School. Leonard has been serving as an administrative assistant at Helena High School.
- Agreed to pay Williford Orman Construction of Hoover $149,836 to completely renovate boys and girls restrooms at Wilsonville Elementary School.
- Agreed to pay Titan Electric of Dora $54,242 to renovate the baseball and football field lights at Shelby County High School and replace the softball field lights.
- Agreed to solicit proposals for replacing the fire alarm system at Oak Mountain High School after receiving no bids for the job in a competitive bid process.
Superintendent Lewis Brooks also informed the school board that Shelby County has 1,602 students in summer school remediation this summer, including 836 elementary students, 216 middle school students and 550 high school students.
That’s a lot more than usual, Carroll said. The district doesn’t normally have a districtwide elementary summer school, and the number of middle and high schoolers in remediation is at least twice as many as usual, she said.
The main reason is because more students are behind where they should be due to lost instruction time with the COVID-19 pandemic, Brooks said.
The Shelby County school district is not charging any fees for summer school this year and is holding it at every high school instead of just two high schools. The district also is offering free transportation, breakfast and lunch, as well as nursing, special education and English language learning services this summer, Brooks said.
