Former Norcross Principal to Take Over at Alpharetta

publication date: Jun 2, 2008

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author/source: Tim Altork / STAFF

By Tim Altork / STAFF

Charron

Mary Anne Charron has been named the new principal at Alpharetta High School. She will be replacing Buck Greene who has sat in the principal’s chair for the past three years at the 4-year old school. Greene is moving on to help open the new high school in Johns Creek that is scheduled to begin classes in the fall of 2009.

Charron was the principal at Norcross High School for four years before taking a job at the Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement (GLISI) in 2006. She will officially take over at Alpharetta on July 1 but has been working with Greene to help smooth the transition.

She has spent 16 years as a principal in Gwinnett County. She lives in Cumming and has been married for 35 years.

Charron sat down with the Beacon last week to discuss herself and her plans for the future at Alpharetta. Here are some excerpts from that conversation:

Beacon: What was the appeal of Alpharetta High School?

Mary Anne Charron: It’s a wonderfully diverse community. People from every walk of life, kids from every walk of life are there. There is just a tremendous balance and regard for high academic achievement, the arts – the fine arts are incredible – and the emphasis to make the athletics the top in the state. It has a huge desire to give back to the community. Its mission talks about the impact of service to the community. The whole well-roundedness of the school is just really awesome.

B: Why did you leave GLISI?

MAC: I actually had a job that people would give their right arm for at the Georgia Leadership Institute…. You work from home, you get great pay, great benefits. It’s a great job. People have said ‘You’re crazy to do this,’ but the bottom line is I miss kids. I just miss the ability to work with kids and teachers, and that’s what I didn’t do with GLISI.

B: Alpharetta is now on its third principal in five years. That’s pretty unusual isn’t it?

MAC: It is. But it’s about putting the talent in the right place. I know that the superintendent and the board of education work long and hard to make sure that they have the talent in the right place. I know that they don’t like to do [move people around], but when they look at the whole organization systemically they do sometimes.

B: What’s your general philosophy as an administrator?

MAC: My real goal is that teacher leadership and student leadership is key to the school. I am just passionate that teachers and students need to be able to put the plan in place for student achievement. That’s not going to happen from some office up in some hierarchy. So I’m very big on helping teachers to value that leadership capacity and develop that leadership capacity. And I’m very much involved with kids doing that. As a matter of fact I already have a meeting set up in July with the students to talk about what we’re going to do for taking leadership development to the next level for students. That’s really my passion.

B: What was it like being your daughter’s principal? (At Gwinnett County’s Trickum Middle School in the early ‘90’s)

MAC: It was real interesting. You get a phone call and it says, ‘Mrs. Charron, there are several girls that are skipping, and they’re hiding in the gym. I think you need to look into this. And one of them’s yours.’ It was tough for her to be my daughter in middle school. She wanted to be her own person, and the teachers thought she should fit in a little mold and be the principal’s daughter. But she’s a wonderful young lady.

B: What concrete plans do you have in mind for Alpharetta High School?

MAC: One of the things that I’ve spoken to the superintendent about is about the potential of developing an International Baccalaureate program at the school.

B: What is that?

MAC: It is an international standard for education. There are countries in the world where you cannot go to university unless you graduated with an IB diploma. It is a curriculum that is set by international standards, not national standards. Advanced Placement is a national curriculum. IB is international.

B: What is the process for adding the IB curriculum?

MAC: The process would be that I would engage the teachers and the parents in conversations for the first few months of school. If we get positive response I would begin the process of filling out the application, and the application process would probably take another – well, they would need it by the summer of 2009. And we could actually begin teaching coursework once we get certified.

B: What is your philosophy for sustaining excellence at Alpharetta?

MAC: If you have a system in place, it doesn’t matter who is sitting in the principal’s office because if you have developed the skills where the teachers are the leaders and the students are the leaders of the school, that school is going to run. It doesn’t matter who is in the principal position. Administrative leadership is very important, but the kids and the teachers can keep it building at the highest level.