Newmarket names new high school principal, assistant principal after top leaders resign

Max Sullivan, Portsmouth Herald
·3 min read

NEWMARKET — Longtime Portsmouth High School administrator Andrew Korman will take the helm as Junior-Senior High School principal this year, as SAU 31 fills the last of its open leadership positions.

Korman, who has served as director of curriculum and assistant principal at Portsmouth High School, was hired in tandem with the promotion of Jeanne Civiello as assistant principal. They were both approved at the June 16 Newmarket School Board meeting, and their first day on the job will be July 1, according to Interim Superintendent Todd Allen.

The new hires follow the departure of four major administrators this year, first being Junior-Senior High School Principal David Dalton in March. That was followed by Superintendent Susan Givens, Assistant Superintendent Debra Black and JSHS Assistant Principal Sheana Thorell tendering their resignations in an email together in April.

SAU 31 has filled its remaining open positions in the school district's administration.
SAU 31 has filled its remaining open positions in the school district's administration.

Allen was hired in May and said it was his intent to fill the remaining three vacancies by June. The following week he hired former Cooperative Middle School Principal Patty Wons to become the new director of curriculum, a position that will take the place of the assistant superintendent role.

“We’ve kind of closed the gap on all of our leadership positions,” Allen said. “We’re feeling like things are really starting to fall together, I think. It’s a good team.”

Andrew Korman
Andrew Korman

Korman was assistant principal at Portsmouth High School for seven years before becoming director of curriculum, according to Allen. He said Korman was a finalist for the Portsmouth principal position before they chose to hire Stephen Chinosi in May.

“That left Andrew, a really excellent guy, available to us,” Allen said. He said in addition to experience with curriculum and running a public school, Korman acquired his doctorate at the University of New Hampshire four years ago with studies that included student engagement and improving dropout rates.

“He brings a focus on how do we just make our school community as engaging as possible,” Allen said.

Allen said Civiello had been a speech pathologist in the high school for a year before her promotion.

Jeanne Civiello
Jeanne Civiello

She came to the Newmarket school system after having served as special education director in Exeter. Allen said Civiello has become well respected by faculty and staff in Newmarket since coming to the Junior-Senior High School, having been working in the middle school program.

“When you have lots of leadership turnover, it is nice to have at least one of them that’s an internal person,” Allen said. “It brings some sense of comfort and institutional knowledge.”

Previous story: Newmarket names interim SAU 31 superintendent after top school leaders resign

What caused mass exodus of school leaders?

School Board members had said in the spring they wanted to have exit interviews conducted to learn why so many administrators left at once this year. Allen said he has since conducted interviews with each of the outgoing administrators, and that he found resignations were tendered largely for personal reasons. He said timing appeared to have been a coincidence, and that when asked if they would consider returning to work in Newmarket, most said they would.

“We’ve kind of closed the gap on all of our leadership positions,” Interim Superintendent Todd Allen. “We’re feeling like things are really starting to fall together, I think. It’s a good team.”
“We’ve kind of closed the gap on all of our leadership positions,” Interim Superintendent Todd Allen. “We’re feeling like things are really starting to fall together, I think. It’s a good team.”

“I would like to publicly say there really is nothing special going on in Newmarket,” Allen said. “We had four people whose decisions to depart were all individual personal reasons that had nothing to do with each other than the timing.”

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Allen said in addition to family-related concerns, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought new challenges to the education field, adding to the reasons why administrators decided to leave.

“I think, not surprisingly, there’s a lot of people who are just fatigued,” Allen said. “It’s been a very challenging time to be in education, and I think it’s caused people to really think a lot.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Newmarket NH names new high school principal, assistant after SAU 31 resignations