Boddy is Leaving Beall Elementary

After five years at the helm of Beall Elementary School, Troy Boddy is moving on and the Rockville school is searching for a new principal.

On Thursday, the county school board appointed Boddy as the director of the school system’s Equity Initiatives Unit in the Office of Human Resources and Development.

The move leaves Beall in search of its first new leader since Boddy took over as principal during the 2005-2006 school year.

The school’s staff has already met with central office administrators including Community Superintendent Sherry Liebes to identify characteristics that they would like to see in a new principal.

Parents are invited to attend a similar meeting at 7 tonight in the school’s media center.

Interviews of potential candidates are expected to be held next week and a new principal is expected to be named by the school board at its July 8 meeting, Boddy said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

One piece of advice Boddy has for his successor: “A little bit of creativity always helps.”

In meetings with administrators about the next principal “the staff said, ‘We hope the new person knows part of the job is wearing a costume and being outrageous at times,” said Boddy, who was known to occasionally dress as the school’s mascot, a blue dragon known as Bella, including an appearance .

Boddy’s new job puts him in charge of a unit that works to close the so-called achievement gap between African American and Hispanic students and their white and Asian peers by improving instruction across racial, ethnic and cultural lines.

“In five years we did a lot here at Beall to do that,” Boddy said. “So now I get to take what we were able to accomplish here and have an impact on the county level.”

Beall’s student population of 707 students during the 2010-2011 school year was 34 percent white, 26 percent Asian, 17 percent Hispanic and 14 percent African American, according to the county’s “Schools at a Glance” publication. Fifteen percent of students had limited English skills, 24 percent were on free and reduced-price meals—a measure schools use as a poverty indicator and 9 percent were in special education.

Boddy said he sees his new job as part of addressing one of the last great challenges for American public education.

“We had Brown v. the Board of Education in 1954,” he said. “We’ve made steps forward. But one of the last great frontiers in education is closing the achievement gap or the gap in performance of students—students from different races, different income levels. If any school system can do it, Montgomery County can do it. So that’s exciting.”

Communication and building relationships was part of what made Boddy a popular leader with staff and the school community. Those qualities will also be important for his successor, he said.

“The biggest thing is, you have to care about kids and making a difference for them,” he said. “You have to support the staff and push and challenge them to continue to get better because they’re already very good.”

A principal also must be “visible” and “really reach out to the community,” he said.

“Over the years we worked really hard to really strengthen our connection to the community and make sure the school was really open and [parents] had a role, Boddy said. “So now it’s just how it is here.”

Boddy said that he leaves Beall, with its strong staff and its active community of students and parents, with mixed emotions.

“I’ve loved every minute of being here,” he said. “It’s really a great community. Somebody’s really getting a great school.”