‘At home’: Introducing 3 educators taking the helm at upper-level Beaufort Co. schools

For Beaufort High School’s newest principal, Georgia transplant Carla Shelton, Beaufort is “something like home” that “makes you feel really solid inside.”

Shelton, who was most recently a principal of a high school in Evans, Georgia, has been vacationing and visiting her sister in the area for close to 15 years.

“It’s kind of been my go-to place,” she said.

Shelton and four others were hired Tuesday, June 21, to be new principals in the Beaufort School District for the coming school year. She along with Elandee “Dee Dee” Thompson for Beaufort Middle School and Clinton Austin for Hilton Head Middle School will take the helm at upper-level schools.

Shelton is the only out-of-state principal hired for the 2022-23 school year. The four other roles were filled by educators already in the district.

She will be replacing Charity Summers as principal for Beaufort High School. When she starts out in a new place, Shelton’s leadership style allows her to mostly sit back and observe.

“Going into a new environment, the first thing I like to do is get a stakeholder perspective,” she said in an interview with The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.

A controversy surrounding Beaufort High School in the last few months has been conflict over the school’s mascot and school colors, which were part of an agreement in desegregation efforts when the school morphed with St. Helena High School and Robert Smalls High School in the late 1960s.

Alums from the school have spoken out in recent months against different variations of the school’s mascot, a flying eagle, and accent colors added to sports and band uniforms. The alterations have been likened to “erasing history” of the other two schools, which served primarily Black students at the time. As a newcomer, Shelton said, taking cues from community members is crucial when deciding how best to move forward to address an issue such as this.

“I can read all that I want to and learn the history, but sometimes you have to hear it from the stakeholders,” Shelton said. “For me to come in and assume is not going to be very productive.”

Shelton has been in education for over 25 years. In that time, she has been a special education teacher, a school counselor, assistant principal and principal. These experiences have afforded her the unique perspective and “advantage” of looking “at learners from different lenses.”

Coming into a new school and new school year, Shelton said one of the first things she plans to do is get a foothold on moving forward from COVID-19 and the impact remote learning had on students and staff alike.

To boost morale and help Beaufort High students and teachers regain their footing during the 2022-23 school year, Shelton said she is most excited to bring people together and make good memories.

“I think we have to get everyone reconnected,” she said. “We have to understand we are going to have to get back to school as we know it. I think what’s come out of the whole COVID crisis is people need each other.”

Felt like “coming home”

May River High School’s two assistant principals will each be switching gears and heading back to middle school for their new positions as principals, a first for both educators.

Thompson has worked within the Beaufort County School District for 25 years. As the child of a Marine, she grew up in Beaufort County and went to the “Battery Creek cluster,” she said. Of starting her new role at Beaufort Middle School, a place where she had taught at and where her own children went to school, Thompson said accepting the job felt like “coming home.”

She will take over as principal of Beaufort Middle School, replacing the school’s current leader, Alvida Graham.

A national teacher shortage as a result of the pandemic has left schools all over the country shorthanded. Thompson said one of her main focuses going into the new school year will be teacher retention and taking care of “people first.”

Currently, there are 24 job openings for middle school teachers within the district.

“I always say happy teachers and happy students are productive and learning students and staff,” Thompson said. “Focusing on that academic learning for both students and teachers is, of course, key.”

Previously, Thompson has been a science and math teacher within the Beaufort County School District and has been an assistant principal at Battery Creek High School and Beaufort High School as well as at May River High.

Her goal for the 2022-23 school year is to embrace the school’s Arts in Basic Curriculum (ABC) project while also moving forward with advancing its science programs. Med-Tech 7, a project geared toward students in the medical and engineering fields that is a part of the district’s magnet school’s assistance program, will be offered at the school at the start of the year.

“Those will allow us to bridge that gap that we are seeing in the arts to create a STEAM brand and that is something that I am fully embracing and excited to help lead through,” she said.

STEAM education is an approach to learning that uses science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics as access points for guiding student inquiry, dialogue, and critical thinking, according to artsintegration.com.

Clinton Austin came to the Beaufort County School District from Pennsylvania 10 years ago and said “it felt like home right away.” Before that, he was a physical education and health teacher at East Stroudsburg Area High School in Pennsylvania. Austin has worked toward becoming principal, a position he said he’s wanted for years, by learning from supervisors.

“From what I can tell, I am about to inherit a wonderful place with an insurmountable amount of talent in both staff and students,” he said.

Austin has taught at Bluffton Middle School and also served as a coach at both Bluffton Middle and High schools. Since 2017, he has worked as May River High School’s assistant principal alongside Thompson. What he looks forward to the most about taking the helm at Hilton Head Island Middle School is emphasizing the island’s culture and fostering relationships with staff.

“It’s all about relationships ... those are things that, as any local administrator in those roles, you have to not only pave the way to create, but also maintain and help to continue to grow,” he said.

“That’s something that every leader I’ve worked with has shown me.”

NOTE: Tracy Lanese is taking over as principal at Okatie Elementary, and Michelle Brockway will be the new principal at Hilton Head Island Elementary. They will be featured in a future article in The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.