EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW!

La Mirada~ As La Mirada High students begin classes Thursday, September 9th, a new face will be there to welcome them to the new school year.

Bill Seals took over as the new principal in July, replacing Don Jones, who was assigned to a different school in the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District, but has since taken a position in Chino.

In his first year as principal, the challenges he faces are to ensure that the upcoming evaluation by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) goes smoothly and that he maintains a good relationship with staff, the students and the community.

"[WASC evaluations are] going to be one of our big undertakings over the course of the year because it's a formal process and it's a report that we write to the state as a staff and along with that is the staff getting to know and the leadership team that we have here," Seals said. "The goal is to get to know the community and get the administrative staff working with our teaching staff and make a productive working relationship and I think we do have a good administrative staff that can do that."

Another goal that Seals wants to achieve in his tenure is to maintain the improvement of Academic Performance Index score, which he gives credit to the previous administration.

"It's our goal to get our school to be an 800 API school and we're getting closer," he said. "We're getting out there and their test scores have improved this year. The staff's going to be proud that their numbers went up and we're going to continue that trend."

An educator with more than 20 years of experience as a teacher and as an administrator, Seals was an assistant principal at John Glenn High School before accepting his new assignment this summer.

Unlike his eight and a half years as an assistant principal at John Glenn High School, where he said summers were "very, very quiet and have all afternoon pretty much interrupted," he has been busy this summer at La Mirada meeting with parents and other members of the community.

"Here's it always busy and I'm always moving, which is good because it's a community school," he said. "It makes it difficult to get things done, but as a new person I feel it's more important to meet the people than it is necessarily to do the paperwork."

As far as his dedication to education, school board member Darryl Adams noted Seals's commitment as a recipe for success at La Mirada High School.

"I'm impressed with his attention to detail, his accessibility, his understanding of the community, culture which we hope will continue the strong success at La Mirada High School," he said. "The administration team is focused on student achievement, student success and a commitment of the community."

Adams added that Seals and the rest of the administration will "bring a good wealth of experience and complement each other well."

Seals had made efforts this summer to tout his wealth of experience by meeting with parents through an informational evening last month where he and the rest of the administration introduced themselves and met with families.

"Parents want to know who it is that's leading their school and feel comfortable sending their kids here," he said. "It was important for us to share our professional background and our family background. We had the opportunity to meet people individually and get to know them."

Most of the people he met at this event had the opportunity to introduce themselves and helped Seals understand more about the community he is serving.

Despite the change in administration at La Mirada High School and the overall performance of the school district, Seals does not think that the school has overarching problems and is looking forward to improving on the achievements of the past administration.

"I don't think there's anything here that is broken where I have to come in and fix everything," he said. "Maybe I have to improve on a couple of things, like test scores, but I want to continue that trend [of rising test scores]."