Education SUSD Appoints Principal for Fall Online Education
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n order to accommodate an anticipated increase in the number of Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) students engaging in distance learning for the coming school year, two job assignments within Ingleside Middle School’s leadership are changing. Ingleside’s principal, Dr. Christopher Thuman, has been tabbed by the SUSD Governing Board to fill the new position of interim principal of the District’s online learning programs, including SUSD’s distance-learning program, Scottsdale Online Learning (SOL). SOL will be one of the learning options available to SUSD students for the first half of the new school year that starts August 10. Ingleside’s assistant principal (AP), Erin Kadera, takes over as Ingleside’s interim principal. Since 2010, SOL, a fully accredited,
online high school with classes taught by state-certified, SUSD teachers, has provided a viable high school alternative for students statewide who cannot attend a brick-and-mortar school. Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Education Dr. Milissa Sackos says SOL needs a strong administrator overseeing its operations as it adds grades kindergarten through 5th to its existing grade 6 - 12 offerings. Parent surveys indicate that as many as 20% of SUSD students will select the full online model this coming school year. “Dr. Thuman is an experienced school administrator who, in this new assignment, will actually be returning to his roots with SOL, which he helped SUSD create 10 years ago,” says Sackos. “He is the perfect person for this new position.”
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Thuman has served as Ingleside Middle School’s principal since July 2016, starting off his SUSD career teaching biology at Desert Mountain High School. He became executive director of SUSD Community Education and Online Learning in 2008, a post he held until becoming Ingleside’s principal. Kadera returned to Ingleside’s AP post last school year after spending a year as an AP at Saguaro High School. Kadera has been an elementary school teacher, English Immersion Studies program specialist and grants administrator with SUSD, and was first hired in 1996. Thuman’s and Kadera’s new assignments were approved at a July 7 special meeting of the Governing Board. For more information, visit susd.org.
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THE SCOTTSDALE STANDARD • August • 11
