Franklin High School students saw a familiar face in the principal’s office Tuesday morning.
Acting on a recommendation from Superintendent Josh Lynch, on Monday, Oct. 16, the Macon County Board of Education unanimously approved promoting longtime FHS assistant principal Blair King to be the school’s next principal.
“It is with great pleasure that I’m able to introduce the new principal at Franklin High School, which is Blair King,” Lynch stated after the school board approved the personnel reports. “He will take his office starting effective tomorrow (Oct. 17), and that was approved by our board in closed session.”
MCS approves its personnel reports at each monthly meeting after a closed session discussion at the end of the meeting. After the 39-minute closed session on Oct. 16, the board reconvened in open session and approved the personnel reports, which included King’s new job.
“I am excited and honored to begin this new journey at FHS,” King said. “I have been serving as an assistant principal at FHS for eight years and believe this is the best place in WNC to be. I love the staff and the students and look forward to continuing to serve them in this new role.”
“I personally think Mr. King will do a fantastic job, I think most people know he’s been our assistant principal for eight years now, he’s well versed, all the teachers there had nothing but good things to say about him,” school board chair Jim Breedlove said. “I think he’s an excellent choice and will be fantastic. We’re very happy he’s going to take on the position.”
“Mr. King has demonstrated a keen leadership ability and he’s proven himself there for the past eight years as an integral part of that leadership team. As support to the teachers, the faculty and the staff, as well as his students,” Lynch said. “I’m excited for him to be able to continue his vision of excellence there at Franklin High School.”
The search for a new principal began after the school board’s Sept. 25 meeting, when they approved the transfer of Michael “Mickey” Noe from FHS principal to Chief Academic Officer & Director of Federal Programs. The transfer happened effective Oct. 1, but Noe remained partially at FHS until the next principal was named.
Breedlove said Lynch had a “very intensive process” that included “all the stakeholders,” such as FHS teachers, FHS students and community members.
“He took time to get a feeling of how people thought, which was great,” Breedlove said of Lynch’s process.
Lynch said MCS posted the job for two weeks after Noe’s transition. During that time, Lynch said he was at FHS to meet with departments, teachers, committees, student government and more “to listen and learn all that I could in terms of what they felt the best characteristics were for the principal of Franklin High School.”
Lynch said there was also a survey with “pointed questions about characteristics” for the job and asking about the positives and negatives of the school.
“During the two weeks, I was able to gather all of that information and look for themes and patterns that would help me create a rubric for…the qualifications we need for a principal at Franklin High School,” Lynch said.
A principal search committee was “heavy on our departments and our core areas of instruction,” with Lynch mentioning English, History and Science as some of the departments involved.
“I wanted most of the committee to be comprised of the faculty at Franklin High School,” Lynch said. “I had a community member, I had a parent, I also had a member of the county office as well.”
Lynch said there were three candidates, all internal. The search committee contacted another potential candidate from outside Macon County early on, but Lynch said they declined. The “ratings of the rubric” led to choosing a top two, and then there were on-campus walk-throughs where the committee listened to each candidate’s vision. After hearing from committee members on what they wanted from a leader, Lynch made his recommendation to the school board on Oct. 16, which they accepted.
King will possibly soon oversee a period of physical transition, as the new FHS building plans will be unveiled this Thursday, Oct. 19, during a community input session from 4-8 p.m. at the Robert C. Carpenter Community Building.
This will be the first time the public will have a chance to see what a new FHS will look like. Construction could start as soon as the spring, pending Macon County Board of Commissioners and state Local Government Commission funding model approval.
School board members Hilary Wilkes and Diedre Breeden, who are commissioner liaisons, have pored over the plans for months in private meetings and shared their excitement.
The public unveiling will include a VR headset, renderings, schematics, models, a video tour and more, Breeden said.
“It looks amazing, I hope everyone comes out to see it,” Wilkes said of the new FHS plans.
The next Macon County Board of Education meeting will be at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 27, at East Franklin Elementary School.