Chris Mason charges into the year with a new head position.

Mason, the former assistant principal, is now principal for the 2016-17 school year.

Mason has become principal for the first time.  When Mason was being interviewed for the principal position, he knew they wanted someone who knew the school and the programs.  He is planning on focusing on ACT scores to improve the school.

Our new principal decided to join charger nation because of the great academic tradition at Bullitt East.  Students have worked hard to make the school part of the top ten school of distinction.

Mason believes that our school has students who work extremely hard in the classroom and has teachers that work extremely hard in the classroom. Mason says that it just feels like being apart of that is something that’s truly a blessing.

According to Mason, since this school year has started there hasn’t been a difficult situation.  Even for the past three years, while he was assistant principal, there had not been many tough situations. However, when any type of bad situation does come across, he has to be sensitive to each parent, student, and teacher.

“The most important characteristic of an effective school are teachers that love to teach and students that are engaged from the moment they walk in the room,” said Mason.

A goal Mason has is to continue the tradition of being a top performing school, not only in the county, but also the state.  He’s also pushing the seniors to be college and/or career ready.

“We want our students to be ready for life after high school.  Not only if they decide they want to go to college, but if they want to go to the work force, if they want to go into the military, if they just want to go and be productive citizens of Mount Washington.  That’s what we really want to strive for,” said Mason.

Crystal Barr, one of the school counselors, thinks one of the biggest expectations for the new principal is to continue to focus on college and career readiness for all of the students.  Also, to continue to remain one of the top schools in the state. Just like the last principal, Barr thinks he is very student centered.

“Mr. Mason loves Bullitt East and is passionate about our school.  He is excited and working hard.  He is focused on helping our students and staff continue to excel and I think he will do a great job,” said Barr.

There are four different focuses he plans to work on to improve Bullitt East.  He is planning on continuing to improve students ACT scores and reading scores.  The school will work to reduce novice on the EOC’s.  He says students will continue to work extremely hard in their professional learning community, or POC’s, on common assessment, and in looking at data and disaggregating the data so that faculty and administration can do what’s best for students.

For his leadership style, he is very democratic.  He likes to get input from several different people when making decisions. When it’s time to make a decision, the leadership team is not afraid to make tough decisions.

“I really like our new principal, I am looking forward to a great year,” said Melissa Hightower, biology teacher.

To Mason, the major role of a principal is to be the leader of the school, with that comes the responsibility of building relationships.  Not only building relationships with students, but building relationships with the community, parents, and teachers as well.

“I think he’s very involved in students.  He walks around and talks to everybody and he makes sure he knows everybody on more than just a student-principal relationship.  I see him around the school a lot, in the hallways in the morning and he says ‘hi’ and he’s very nice just like Mr. Foster was,” said Brooke Stivers, a senior.

The teachers, staff, and students are looking forward to the new year with a new principal.