The Kingston school district’s assistant director of special education services will begin a two-week transition next week to the job of interim principal at Edward R. Crosby Elementary School.
Kimberly Terwilliger will take over for departing Principal John Voerg, who is becoming the district’s assistant superintendent for personnel and administration on Feb. 1.
Terwilliger, 46, is taking a leave of absence from the assistant director of special education services position that she has held since January 2007. Prior to that, her duties were split between those of a special education coordinator and a speech language pathologist — the position the district first hired her for in 1988.
Terwilliger has been the principal of summer school for special education students the past two years and recently was an interim principal at M. Clifford Miller Middle School for more than a month.
Terwilliger said she was excited for her new opportunity and that her primary goal is to continue to move Crosby in the direction Voerg had been taking it. She said Voerg has fostered “a sense of community” among staff, students and parents.
She also emphasized the importance of teamwork with school staff that’s needed for a principal to be successful.
Terwilliger’s stint as interim principal is scheduled to end June 30. On the prospect of her becoming a long-term principal, she and Superintendent Gerard Gretzinger said several factors need to be considered.
“It has to be the right fit,” Terwilliger said, adding that it “depends on the direction of the district.”
The Kingston school board has decided not to close an elementary school for 2011-12, but Gretzinger noted that principals sometimes move around at the end of the school year. “We’ll have to wait and see,” he said.
Terwilliger is from Kingston and said she attended elementary school classes in the room in which the school board currently meets at the district’s administration building on Crown Street in Kingston…