“Students and staff working together, let’s make today another great day” has been a staple of East life for the past three and some years. Now, the phrase is expected to vanish from the morning announcements as Principal Ken Proulx leaves to take a new job as principal of Newport Middle School in Carteret County, N.C. after winter break.
Proulx’s official final day leading East Chapel Hill High will be Dec. 31, and he will be visiting family in Europe until Dec. 14. Assistant Principal Aaron Acome will serve as interim principal until a new principal is named.
“When I got to East Chapel Hill High School in July of 2018, this school was already an amazing place,” Proulx said. “And so when I came in, I certainly wanted to do the best that I could to maintain the tradition and the history and the recognition that East Chapel Hill had while putting my own signature on it.”
Acome has had a much longer history at East. He worked as a social studies teacher at the school from 1998-2014, teaching a variety of classes, including American History and AP European History. He then worked at Smith and Cedar Ridge in administrative roles before returning to East as an assistant principal in 2018.
Since he learned that he would be interim principal, Acome has been preparing to take on tasks formerly done by Proulx. He says he has been keeping a notebook full of information on what he will do as interim principal: “different deadlines, graduations, all the traditional stuff that principals work on.”
Acome believes that Lincoln Center will provide some support, since otherwise he and the other assistant principals, Ileana Herrera and Brandon Patterson, would be doing the work of four people.
“I’ll miss Mr. Proulx. Personally and professionally, I think he’s done a lot for the school,” Acome said.
Proulx says he feels successful in creating and continuing traditions at East, but acknowledges that he has faced some unique challenges as principal.
“It’s interesting as I reflect on my career here, which will be three and a half years, almost two years of that was in a pandemic,” Proulx said.
Despite the barriers of transitioning East, a school with over 1,500 students, to an entirely virtual model in 2020 and then transitioning back to an entirely in-person model over a year later, Proulx says he found welcome support from the community.
“I think that just the overall collaboration and cooperation as we have dealt with the difficulties of the pandemic has been a testament to what a wonderful school and community East Chapel Hill is,” he said.
Proulx says he hopes that sense of collaboration and teamwork continues after he leaves at the end of the semester for Carteret County. He said that he was motivated to take a job there in order to be closer to his daughter and two-year-old grandson, who live nearby.
Since August, Proulx has been looking for jobs in a region of Eastern N.C., including Carteret and nearby Jones, Pamlico and Craven counties. However, he said the job at Newport Middle School, which has a student population of approximately 400, is the only one he applied for. He was confirmed in the Carteret County school board meeting Wednesday, Nov. 3.
There are some significant differences between the policies and demographics of Carteret County and Chapel-Hill Carrboro City Schools. Carteret County is mask-optional, unlike CHCCS. At the same meeting in which the Board confirmed Proulx as principal, it passed a resolution that banned Critical Race Theory from being taught in their school district.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 data, Carteret County is 86.5 percent white, while Orange County is 69.5 percent white. Furthermore, Orange County has roughly double the percentage of people with bachelor’s degrees as Carteret County.
One similarity between the two districts, though, was important in Proulx’s decision-making process.
“When you look at barometers of school report cards, you see that Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools and Carteret County Schools are always at the top of the list,” Proulx said. “I wanted to work in a school district that has high academic standards and good student success.”
Niche.com ranks Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools as the No. 1 public school district in North Carolina and Carteret County Public Schools No. 14 out of the 115 school districts in the state.
Many students and staff stated that they would miss the energy that Proulx brought to the school. Math teacher Susan Little remembers telling Proulx during his first week at East that he was too loud on the announcements. In response, she said, Proulx just laughed.
“Having him on the announcements every day has been really cool,” senior Kiran Carrington said. “One of the best principals that I’ve ever had.”
For most current seniors at East, Proulx has been the principal for the entirety of their high school experience, since former principal Eileen Tully had left in 2018 before they entered. The news of his departure felt sudden to many.
“I wasn’t expecting it, since he got here my freshman year,” Carrington said. “And now, four years later, I wasn’t expecting him to leave as quickly as he did.”
Senior Liana Tortora fondly remembered seeing Proulx singing with a band of East staff, the East Beasts, during pep rallies before the pandemic.
Although some students wondered whether recent school fights had played any role in Proulx’s decision to leave, Proulx denied that they had influenced his choice, pointing out that there is much more to his job than breaking up fights and that fights can happen at any school.
“[Proulx]’s going to miss East when he’s gone,” Acome said. “He’s made that clear to me. I truly believe he’s going to miss interactions with students.”
As Proulx prepares to assume the role of principal at Newport, he plans to carry his catchphrase with him: “Students and staff working together, let’s make today another great day.”
He says a teacher at Holly Ridge Middle School, where he worked as principal from 2006-2008, coined the phrase.
“I took it from him. He gave me full permission,” Proulx said. “It’s not patented, so I would leave it up to whoever does the morning announcements and continues in that role to determine what would be the best way to greet the students and to start the day.”
Acome, for his part, says he is searching for a catchphrase of his own.
Photo by Hammond Cole Sherouse/The ECHO
