CHS’s administration is letting a little math into their office.

Stacy Felps, a longtime math teacher at CHS, has been named CHS’s new instructional coordinator for the year, replacing Assistant Principal Dr. Marci Pieper, who retired at the end of last year.

After working as one of CHS’s assistant principal’s for seven years, Pieper began to consider retirement at the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year.

“I was ready to do something different. Through my whole career, I’ve always reinvented myself several times, so it was just time,” Pieper said.

Although she began considering the possibility at the start of the year, her final decision didn’t come until the school year was nearing its close, which meant a quick turn around time to find her replacement for the coming school year.

“We put the information out and started accepting applications, and Dr. Gutchewsky just wasn’t comfortable with where we were,” Pieper said. “At the end of the year when you get that late, a lot of times your really sharp administrators would have taken jobs somewhere else, and they wanted to make sure that someone who came in would be able to handle everything Clayton throws at them.”

In order to ensure that the new assistant principal would be able to fulfill their duties to the caliber set by Pieper, Gutchewsky began to think of alternatives to the applications he had already received.

Once he began to think outside of the traditional hiring box, Gutchewsky realized immediately that Felps, a veteran teacher and mentor within CHS, could fill the role perfectly.

“In my mind she was the perfect person to lead us in that area, particularly in the fact that she could hit the ground running,” Gutchewsky said. “She has established relationships, she knows the people involved, she knows the community, she knows the kids.”

Felps had discussed possibilities for moving into a position that would allow her to mentor CHS’s new and old teachers earlier in the year. Although saddened to leave the strong student relationships she cherished in her teaching position, she was thrilled when Gutchewsky approached her with the idea of moving into a new role.

In order for Felps to replace Pieper, however, a few changes had to be made.

Because Felps lacks the certification required of administrative positions, she couldn’t officially take on the “assistant principal” title and a few of the accompanying duties. To accommodate this, assistant principal Ryan Luhning has taken on all of the discipline duties for CHS. Felps’s new position, meanwhile, will focus on the development and evaluation of CHS’s teachers, a project which she is passionate about.

The new head-of-school team has one main goal for this year, both with each other and within the district as a whole.

“Collaboration is our theme for the year … we want to change the mindset of collaboration. Rather than being something that happens on individual, discrete times, [we want to make it] something that’s ongoing throughout all of our work,” Gutchewsky said.

As for next year, the future is undecided but bright.

“We’ll see how Mrs. Felps feels here in a few months after we actually get it going, and if [the new position] is something that she wants to continue,” Gutchewsky said.

Meanwhile, Pieper wasn’t gone for long. After retirement, she soon received another call from Gutchewsky.  CLAMO Yearbook advisor Christine Stricker stepped down from her position at the end of last year to move with her family to Illinois, and the position needed someone who knew yearbooks and CLAMO’s unique system.

By a stroke of luck, Pieper fit these needs perfectly. Before becoming the assistant principal, Pieper was a CHS journalism and the yearbook advisor for 10 years.

Pieper was happy to return to the yearbook and is now working part-time as this year’s CLAMO advisor.

“I came back to the classroom – you can’t ask for something better than that,” Pieper said.

After several shifts in positions and responsibilities, CHS’s administrative team has found new roles to fill in the coming school year. Not only have they avoided hiring someone who wasn’t perfect for the job due to a time crunch, but they’ve reached an innovative solution that offers new opportunities for CHS’s students and staff.

“I’m very excited,” Gutchewsky said. “I think there are a ton of possibilities, and there’s a ton of potential. I think this is going to be good for everybody; it’s going to be good for the school, it’s going to be great for the kids, it’s going to be great for the teachers. I’m looking forward to getting started.”