http://www.journalinquirer.com/site/printerFriendly.cfm?brd=985&dept_id=569429&newsid=18790001
O’Donnell, Kevin F. (MC????)
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09/06/2007
He’s glad to be back at MHS
By:Christine McCluskey , Journal Inquirer
MANCHESTER – Kevin F. O’Donnell liked his job as assistant principal of Bristol Central High School a lot, enough so that there was only one other job he would consider: Manchester High School principal.
The 30-year Manchester resident, who left Bristol and started as MHS’s new principal a couple of weeks ago, said he saw the job as “an opportunity to serve in the community that I’d chosen to live in.”
O’Donnell worked at MHS as a guidance counselor from 1979 to 1989. He grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and earned degrees from Brooklyn College and Long Island University, as well as a professional diploma in counseling from Manhattan College and a sixth-year certificate in administration and supervision from Central Connecticut State University.
He began teaching primarily in the department of religion at a Catholic school in the Bronx, and then got into the area of guidance. He was at MHS when it established ties with Manchester Community College and developed adult education offerings.
After leaving Manchester O’Donnell was an administrator in the South Windsor and Stafford public schools, and for a couple of years he was the education coordinator at the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford.
For the past seven years he was assistant principal of one of Bristol’s two high schools. With about 1,450 students, it was smaller than MHS, where the new freshman class has more than 500 members, but the town of Bristol is similar in size and demographics to Manchester, O’Donnell said.
During his time there, Bristol Central High School was one of only a handful of high schools in Connecticut that have been removed from the federal government’s warning list under No Child Left Behind.
MHS is also on the government’s “in need of improvement” list, with large racial and economic achievement gaps and several subgroups falling below proficiency targets, especially in math, this year.
O’Donnell arrives as the school is either finishing up or in the midst of several big changes, some easy to see and others not as visible.
MHS this summer got itself off the New England Association of Schools and Colleges’ warning list, where it had been for four years, after making several changes that ranged from writing a mission statement to putting more books in the library to constructing the new $35.4 million freshman wing. NEASC evaluates high schools and gives them accreditation.
The school is also in the midst of expanding its “proficiency project,” under which teachers have begun measuring students’ performance against set standards for each course. The project also requires teachers to continue working with students on concepts until the students understand them.
Besides the new freshman wing, efforts to improve students’ first year of high school include putting them in teams for their core courses for the first time this year and assigning them in small groups to faculty advisors.
O’Donnell said he has no plans yet to add any major changes of his own to all these, but will be examining areas of the curriculum to try to improve Connecticut Academic
Performance Test scores, as well as preparing for NEASC’s next visit in 2009, which will require a lot of “self-examination.”
“I’m really excited about coming back here,” O’Donnell said.
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