Tim Wormald

After serving as the assistant principal/activities director for 10 years, Tim Wormald will soon take on the top leadership position at Powell High School.

Superintendent Jay Curtis is recommending that Wormald replace outgoing principal Jim Kuhn, who is retiring this summer; the Powell school board is expected to officially approve the hiring at its Feb. 11 meeting.

“It is easy to assume that simply because Mr. Wormald has been in the building as assistant principal for 10 years, that he is an automatic choice,” Curtis said in an email Wednesday. “However, the hiring committee was very diligent in establishing a vision for what we want to see in the next principal, and Mr. Wormald happens to be an excellent fit for that position.”

Wormald said he is “absolutely excited and humbled.”

“I recognize the responsibility that comes with being a high school principal, and that’s daunting in some ways, but at the same time, it’s really exciting,” he said Wednesday. “I feel like we’ve got the staff and students to be able to overcome just about any challenge, so I’m looking forward to continuing to move forward with these guys.”

Since he and his family moved to Powell in 2009, Wormald said the community has become “home for us.”

“I didn’t want to be anywhere else,” Wormald said. “I love Powell High School, I love Powell, and my family loves it here.”

He said he has wanted to be a principal for a long time, and has learned a lot as assistant principal.

“It’s been a good training ground for me to see if I really do think I have what it takes to lead a school building,” Wormald said.

Superintendent Curtis described Wormald as someone who “leads with conviction and passion,” with a very strong moral and professional character.

“He is a very humble person that is very quick to point out the contributions of others, and very slow to point out his own contributions,” Curtis said. “Though he has been in a position of being chief disciplinarian, he has never lost focus on the inherent good in our kids, and is hungry to help propel PHS from a great school to an excellent one.”

Wormald said he’s looking forward to his role changing a bit, adding, “maybe I won’t have to be the bad guy all the time.” As assistant principal, Wormald has been the primary person to deal with student discipline issues, along with dean of students Scott McKenzie.

“I have really enjoyed my focus with the activities and athletics side of this position, and while the discipline part of it is taxing, there’s still a lot of good that comes out of that — you see a lot of growth from students,” Wormald said. “I have appreciated that, but I am also looking forward to being able to focus more on being an instructional leader.”

Before moving to Powell, Wormald worked as an English teacher and assistant principal in Colorado.

Wormald said he hopes to keep moving forward with the professional learning community model at PHS. The new 4.5-day schedule allows for more collaborative team meetings with staff on Friday afternoons, he said, while providing opportunities for interventions with students who may be struggling.

PHS also will be dealing with increasing enrollment in the next few years.

“One of the things that we’ll need to consider is trying to hire more staff to meet the needs and possibly looking at some positions and restructuring them a little bit to ... try to meet needs without necessarily adding expenditures,” Wormald said.

While Wormald feels like he has a pretty good pulse on what’s happening at PHS, “it’s going to be a significant learning curve for me, just in terms of the depth of some of the responsibilities that I’ll have,” he said.

In his current role, Wormald said he has learned a lot from Principal Kuhn, calling him “one of the best leaders I’ve ever worked for.”

“His patience and kindness and authenticity are really second to none,” Wormald said. “He’s a great man and a great leader — I’m going to miss him as a mentor, and plan to keep his number on speed dial here, because I’m sure I’ll have a lot of questions going forward.”

This is the second time in the past year that an assistant principal in Powell has been named a head principal. Kyle Rohrer was hired last spring as the Powell Middle School principal after serving as the school’s activities director/assistant principal.

Curtis said the advantage to hiring an internal candidate is that “as long as the person being promoted is the right fit, we know exactly who and what we are getting with no surprises.”

“We also get a seamless transition with the person already having worked in the school, as they already know the teachers, the system, and students,” he added.

To hire a new activities director/assistant principal, Curtis said the position will be opened to in-house candidates first, “then to external candidates if we do not have someone we feel has the necessary skill and experience to be successful in that position.”

“This position has, prior to Mr. Wormald, seen a great deal of turnover, as it is a very time-intensive position,” he added. “The right fit will be crucial to ensure consistency for our system and ultimately for our students.”