Melissa Bailey Photo
When he steps off the basketball court to take charge of Hillhouse High School, Kermit Carolina’s first job will be to build four new “schools.”
Carolina (pictured above), who has coached the Hillhouse boys basketball team for six years, was approved by the school board Monday night as the school’s new principal. Carolina is currently the basketball coach and assistant principal. He will replace Lonnie Garris, who’s retiring after 20 years on the job.
Carolina, who’s 42, starts his new job Thursday with a salary of $129,405, a $22,679 raise. He will step down as basketball coach.
Before joining Hillhouse as assistant principal in 2007, Carolina taught history at Riverside Education Academy and served as in-school suspension coordinator at a transitional high school. In 1992, he founded the Hot-Shot Summer Camp, a program for kids from West Rock, Dixwell, Newhallville and Dwight.
His appointment brings the school district halfway to its goal of filling two vacant spots at the city’s largest high schools. Wilbur Cross remains without a new leader as of July 1.
Coach Carolina said he’s looking forward to the chance to reach more kids, beyond the “House Family,” as he affectionately calls his basketball crew. Under his leadership, the team won two state championships. He said he’d transfer a couple of lessons he’s learned as a coach, such as how to build teamwork. He said he taught teamwork by running a lot of “intense” drills.
“We’re going to take some of those strategies from the court into the school building,” he said. “We’re going to institute a full court press.”
As the district moves forward with its school reform campaign, Carolina has already put together an improvement plan. He said it involves breaking up the students and staff into four distinct “schools” within the school. Each one will be a “small learning community,” he said.
Each has its own theme: The Freshmen Academy will help kids transition from middle to high school. The HELP school will focus on Humanities, Education, Law/Government, Public Service. The “STEM” track will specialize in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. And CAB will offer Communication, Arts and Business classes.
Hillhouse already has some themed programming along these lines. Carolina said the difference next year is that each program will be its own “school,” with its own students and its own staff — including an assistant principal, counselor, and teachers for English language-learners and special education students. All freshmen will enter the Freshmen Academy, Carolina said. The upper grades will get to choose which “school” to be part of.
That tailored approach to learning is one tool Hillhouse is employing as it aims to meet the district’s school reform goals: cutting the dropout rate in half, closing the achievement gap in five years, and ensuring every kid gets the opportunity to go to college.
Hillhouse has a long way to go. According to the latest test scores, only 5 percent of students scored “at goal” on reading on the Connecticut Academic Performance Test, compared to 17 percent district-wide and 48 percent for the state. Click here for the school’s interim assessment.
As Carolina shifts his focus to those goals, what will happen to his basketball team?
Carolina said he is sure that if given the chance, his three assistant coaches would step up and carry on the successes of the basketball team. Schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo said he will open up the Hillhouse basketball coach position to applicants from inside and outside the school district.
“The job will be posted,” Mayo said. “It’s an open thing.”