Jennifer Dean

By LAURIE DENNIS
DavidsonNews.net

Jennifer Dean may be the new principal at Bailey Middle, but she is no stranger to the school.

Ms. Dean helped open the middle school on Bailey Road in the fall of 2006, and spent a year there as an assistant principal for the seventh grade before being asked to help with a high needs school in Charlotte. Ms. Dean’s knowledge of the “AP” role at Bailey came in handy — she started work at the school just as the district was announcing that Bailey would be one of several schools to lose an assistant principal due to budget cuts.

Ms. Dean said Michael Kelly, who served last year as the eighth grade AP, has been moved to Independence High.

“It actually worked out because Independence is closer to home for him,” Ms. Dean said.

For the two remaining APs, Stacey Wood will handle the sixth grade plus two teams of seventh graders while Denita Newby will focus on the eighth grade plus one team of seventh graders.

“The goal is for the APs to really focus on instruction,” Ms. Dean explained.

Programs and partnerships

As she prepares for the start of a new school year, Ms. Dean said she is excited about continuing to expand Bailey’s offerings, in terms of both classes and extracurricular activities.

“We have an awesome fine arts program,” she said, noting the school’s award-winning band, drama, dance and orchestra electives. “And our athletics programs are kicking butt.”

She is currently working with the local Kiwanis Club to develop a new “Builders Club” aimed at developing leadership skills, and said she would like to see the formation of an engineers club. She has already begun to look for ways to partner with area community groups, having held a meeting earlier this month with representatives of local churches to learn more about youth programs for tutoring and other kinds of assistance.

Bailey High School

Ms. Dean will also be keeping an eye on the construction down the road.

“They’ve broken ground for the new high school,” Ms. Dean confirmed.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is scheduled to open a new high school, paired with Bailey Middle, in the fall of 2010. Construction could bring more sidewalks along Bailey Road, which could help make it possible for students to walk to school.

“There are no students in our walk zone at this point,” Ms. Dean said. “We are interested in the ‘bus and walk’ programs in Davidson – our eyes have been opened to this. We’d like anything that could shorten the car lines.”

Ten months to empower kids

Ms. Dean comes to Bailey following a year spent at Midwood High, a transitional school in Charlotte for ninth-graders who fail the 8th grade end-of-grade test. She called the experience a valuable one in learning about how students can succeed.

“We had a year to help build these students up,” Ms. Dean said. “It was a challenge and helped us see the value of student support services, because we realized that we couldn’t do it by ourselves and there were already so many things already in place in the community.”

Ms. Dean said she brought to Midwood lessons from her initial time at Bailey, a high-achieving school (it is ranked as a “School of Distinction” within the CMS district, and has a 92 percent pass rate in reading and an 85 percent rate in math). She also drew on what she had learned about education from Angela Baucom, the Bailey principal who first hired her as an AP.

“I had to put into practice everything I’d learned from Angela,” she said. “It was a wonderful experience. We had ten months with those kids and we had our back against the wall and we had to find ways to empower them.”

Rural roots

While at Midwood, Ms. Dean learned that Ms. Baucom was going to retire and decided to apply for the job of principal at Bailey.

Interestingly, Ms Dean did not herself attend a middle school, having grown up in a rural part of eastern North Carolina that did not offer a middle school option.

“I went to a K-8 school – Aulander Elementary,” she said.

She comes from a family of educators, including her mother, who worked as an English teacher and a librarian.

“I’ve always been around it and always been inclined to it,” she said of the field of education.

Ms. Dean moved to the Charlotte area after marrying her husband, Al. They now have a three-year-old daughter, Olivia.

Ms. Dean began her teaching career as a high school chemistry and physics teacher, but switched to the middle school level and then became interested in administration. She was an administrator for a middle school in Gaston County before being hired by Ms. Baucom to come to Bailey in 2006.

“I feel very blessed to come back to Bailey,” Ms. Dean said. “My goal here is to extend the reach of our instruction programs, to engage and interest the students and to plug in the kids who are struggling.”