Principal Selection Process and Timeline

Posted March 7, 2022

March 7, 2022

Dear Stephen Knight Center for Early Education Community, 

We deeply value our community partnership. The primary purpose of this letter is to provide an update on the principal selection process. 

As you know, Principal Joanne Lander kindly agreed to serve as our Interim Principal for the 2021-22 school year. She has helped us continue our strong course forward. We will forever be indebted to Principal Lander for her invaluable strength, service, and care for the SKCEE community. Please join me in thanking her for her service. 

We are writing to explain how we will proceed with finding the next principal of SKCEE for the 2022-23 school year and beyond. During the pandemic, DPS made the difficult decision to avoid large in-person meetings and events to prioritize the health and safety of our students and community. Because of the health precautions, we were able to implement some new processes in principal hiring that make the process overall more transparent and accessible to all of our school communities. We will be continuing with some updates to the way we have traditionally conducted school principal search processes prior to spring 2020. The updates to the process are grounded in the following guiding principles: 

  • Creating increased opportunities for a wide variety of stakeholder feedback 
  • Easy access for stakeholders from multiple language backgrounds with translators
  • Equity of access for school communities despite personal circumstances of time and access to technology 
  • Toward this end, we will be following the revised steps for the principal search process in alignment with the guiding principles. The process will include the following:  Collaborative School Committee (CSC) virtual meeting to review the revised process and give feedback on the principal profile. 
  • Stakeholder survey to generate questions for the final candidates. Stakeholder groups will include CSC, school staff, students, and families. 
  • DPS leader pre-screening interviews of candidates in alignment with the principal profile facilitated by the Regional Instructional Superintendent. 
  • Pre-recorded candidate presentations in multiple languages to share their vision for the school and address questions generated by stakeholder groups. 
  • Stakeholder surveys and call-in opportunities to provide feedback on candidate presentations.
  • Superintendent review of stakeholder feedback and final interview with candidates. 

We value your voice and the voices of all stakeholders in the SKCEE community. To honor this, we invite staff, students, parents, and community members to submit questions for candidates to address in their virtual presentation by March 11, 2022 at 12 p.m. by these methods below: 

– Use the Community Input Survey (English/Spanish): https://bit.ly/SKCEEFeedback22 – Call the Office of Family & Community Engagement via phone at 720-423-3054

– Email the form below with your survey responses to Brittany Barela at Brittany_Barela@dpsk12.org 

Below this letter is the revised timeline of the community involvement steps of the process. We will also engage in rigorous reference and data collection on all candidates. 

We would like to reiterate that we know this leadership transition is difficult for staff, students, and families, and there may be disappointment at not being able to engage with principal candidates in person. We believe that this approach is the best option to allow all members of our community more equitable opportunities to provide input as we work together to find strong principal candidates for our school. Our focus will be to ensure we identify the best leader to lead SKCEE beginning in the year 22-23. 

Thank you for your support as we work together during this transitional period. 

Sincerely, 

Priscilla Hopkins 

Executive Director, Early Education

Timeline for SKCEE Principal Selection Process 

Now through March 11, 2022 

● Community Feedback via School Principal Input Survey closes March 11 @ 12pm 

March 10, 2022 

● Executive Director meets with CSC re: Search Process and Community Feedback on School Principal Profile and determination of questions 

March 18, 2022 

● Candidate Virtual Presentations & Community Feedback Surveys opens March 18, 2022 ● Candidate Virtual Presentations & Community Feedback Surveys closes March 23, 2022 

Week of April 4, 2022 

● Interview with Superintendent Dr. Alex Marrero and Deputy Superintendent of Schools Michael Ramirez 

Week of April 11, 2022 

● Principal Announced 

*Dates may be subject to change