Stephanie Thompson
A new administrator, Stephanie Thompson, has been announced at Oak Ridge High School. Thompson will be an assistant principal, filling the position previously held by Christopher Scott, who is the new administrator at Secret City Academy (the alternative school).
Thompson began her career as a substitute teacher in Marion County, Florida, at Lake Weir High School. She served in that position for 18 months until she was hired as a College and Career Lab coach in 1998.
In 2000, Thompson moved to Ocala Christian Academy with her children to serve as a full-time business teacher. There, she was charged with rebuilding the program, aligning the curriculum to the current Sunshine Standards of the public schools, and implementing and supervising a work-based learning program, a press release said.
“Our family relocated to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 2002 for my husband to accept a ministry position,” Thompson said in the press release. “My return to the classroom was in 2005, when I was hired at Halls High School as a CTE business teacher. Serving both Halls and Farragut High School as a teacher, a leadership opportunity opened at Austin-East Magnet High School as a lead teacher. The District assembled a team of educators to facilitate a full reconstitution of Austin-East, and as a member of the leadership team, we redesigned the school to ensure the school met expectations for moving off of the No Child Left Behind failing school list.”
Christopher Scott
Under the leadership of former Oak Ridge High School educator Rob Speas, the team assembled a freshman team and created the FOCUS small learning community to support rising ninth-graders in their transition into high school, the press release said. When Speas transitioned into another leadership opportunity, Knox County Schools Superintendent Jim McIntyre appointed Thompson as the FOCUS principal at Austin-East, where she served for three years.
“As part of my principal responsibilities, I was part of the team who wrote, managed, implemented, and reported to the state for our $2.2 million dollar School Improvement Grant, or SIG,” Thompson said. “The implementation of the programs and supports through the SIG resulted in Austin-East experiencing the most improved academic growth seen in years and moving off the NCLB failure list. Based on the success in managing resources with SIG and Title I dollars, I was appointed to supervisor in the Federal Programs Department with Knox County’s Central Office, supervising 17 public and private Title I schools. For the past two years, I have been privileged to serve as principal for Farragut High School, during which time Farragut was ranked number five in the state and named as a repeat Tennessee Reward School.”
Scott was the vice principal of curriculum and instruction at ORHS.
Thompson said she and her husband Neil have been married for 32 years, and they have three Oak Ridge High School alumni—David (2004), Edward (2007), and Mary Katherine (2015). Their youngest son, Matthew, is a rising junior and is “proud to continue the Thompson tradition of wearing number 23 on the football field.
“Our family loves Oak Ridge, and we are thrilled to be part of the Wildcat family,” Stephanie Thompson said.
This press release was submitted by Holly Cross of Oak Ridge Schools.
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