Kara Peterson

PICKING A PRINCIPAL - Kara Peterson's "administrative skills are so strong to be able to coordinate all the teachers, work with the board of trustees, and also make the kids feel happy to come to school.She's there smiling."
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When Kara Peterson returned from smelt fishing in Maine this week, she had the happy task of transforming herself from interim principal of the Barnstable Horace Mann Charter School to permanent principal.
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Anderson noted that Peterson helped bring together staff from three schools: the Horace Mann charter school, Barnstable Middle School, and the former Barnstable Middle School at Marstons Mills.
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Peterson, 35, grew up in Sandwich."I was pretty much a quiet student," she said."I was really involved in athletics.That's where I blossomed and engaged."She got a taste of eadership as captain of her basketball and softball teams.

In her typical open manner, Peterson said she "fell into Keene State College (in New Hampshire) and fell into teaching."She landed her first job in Leominster, where she taught health and physical education classes at all levels of a K-8 school.

"As with most kids on the Cape, you want to get off," Peterson recalled, but after five years in the Plastic City, weekend and vacation trips back home convinced her she belonged here.She joined the faculty at the new Mashpee High School, then moved over to Sandwich High as an assistant principal.Peterson, who had been taking education leadership courses at Bridgewater State, concluded that she preferred working with younger children.

"This is such a great age," she of her fifth and sixth graders at Barnstable Horace Mann Charter School."Kids are enthusiastic about learning.Friends are important, but not the ultimate as in junior high or senior high."

Her hiring in Barnstable began with the question: "What the heck is this Horace Mann thing?"She was not assistant principal for long when the school committee plucked McDonald from the school to administer the whole system, and she became the interim.Details of her contract are still to be worked out, but Peterson knows what she wants to accomplish at her school.It's only been a year and a half that Barnstable sixth graders have been part of the charter school, so more meshing is needed.

She's delighted that the next school year will bring six in-service days, which she promises will not be "same-old, same-old."A motivational speaker, curriculum experts, and teachers who will model effective techniques can be drawn from the school's own faculty, according to Peterson.

The principal-in-waiting is a fan of data-driven instruction, using test scores and other information to adjust teaching to children's specific needs.She wants to keep the school on target for renewal of its state charter in 2009, and she has practice hitting targets - she's a skeet shooter as well as a golfer.The West Barnstable resident also keeps lobster traps in Cape Cod Bay and fishes for bass.

Peterson would like everyone to know "how proud I am and honored, and how committed I am to this job."