Longtime Dale Street School Principal Named District’s Director of Curriculum [Video]

principal Kim Cave is leaving a place she has spent half her life to take the position of Director of Curriculum and Assessment within the .

“I feel as though I have the opportunity to stay with Dale Street and the rest of the district and I am just so excited to work with Bob [Maguire] and really help develop new systems,” Cave said. “We have so [many] exciting things to think about and to work on. It is something that I did in the past that I really enjoyed.”

Medfield Superintendent of Schools, Bob Maguire, announced at that recently retired Ashland elementary school principal, Arlene Argir, would replace Cave as interim principal at Dale. Maguire said the transition is expected to take place on Oct. 31.

“Kim Cave expressed interest in the position and I had also simultaneously had the thinking that Kim would be a good fit,” Maguire said. “One of the really important things for us was seeing that we would have a suitable interim replacement for the remainder of this year to manage Dale Street and it turned out that Arlene Argir [had retired] from many years as principal and teacher with the Ashland Public Schools and we were able to reach an understanding with Arlene about coming onboard for the remainder of the year to fill the position.”

Maguire said the process of promoting Cave intensified “over the last month or so” and culminated this past week with the Dale Street principal being offered and accepting the position in the district vacated by the retirement of Pamela Shufro. Maguire said the timing, while not ideal to occur during the school year, still provides sufficient time for a proper transition to take place.

“We’ve got more than a month to transition Kim [Cave] into her new role and obviously have Arlene [Argir] transition into her position over at Dale,” Maguire said. “We’ve had quite a number of conversations already and met with the faculty over at Dale and talked to them about it.”

Maguire said to help ease the transition, there will be several events taking place over the next few weeks to get faculty, staff, students and parents familiar and comfortable with the changes.

“Over the next few weeks we will have a number of activities where we will have some receptions for parents as well as school staff so everyone can get comfortable and acquainted to the changes that are taking place,” Maguire said.

Cave said while she is excited for the opportunity, it will be hard letting go of a place that has been such an important part of her life for so long.

“Chris [Morrison, school committee member] was at our information night  [at Dale Street] and he said something that really tugged at me,” Cave said. “He said, ‘Kim really loves Dale Street.’ It’s true, I think you all know that I truly love the school, I grew up in it and I figured out that half of my life has been spent at Dale Street.”

Letting go of Dale Street became less difficult for Cave when she found out Argir would be her interim replacement.

“I think I feel so good about turning Dale Street over to Arlene because we had an opportunity to talk just for a few hours and I feel as though she was totally on the same page with her philosophy about the children and how important it is to really foster that community of the school,” Cave said.

Argir’s experience in elementary education and as a principal in the Ashland School District doesn’t hurt, either.

“She’s been doing it for a long time, successfully and she’s only been out of it for a few weeks and misses it greatly,” Cave said of Argir. “I think it would be a difficult decision for me if I didn’t know I was passing it over to someone as wonderful as Arlene. I know I’m going to learn as much from her as I am from Bob and from everybody in the district.”

Argir has 32 years of professional education experience within Ashland Public Schools and is excited for the opportunity to join the district in Medfield.

“It’s my pleasure to come to Medfield,” Argir said. “I have a lot of years experience working with children, particularly fourth and fifth grade and I feel really good about what I did talk with Kim about. She needed to feel good about leaving the school to somebody and I needed to feel good about coming to a new place and stepping in the middle of the school year.”

Argir said she is eager to begin her tenure at Dale Street and assured Cave the transition will go well for all involved.

“We are going to spend a couple of transition days meeting with the children,” Argir told the committee. “I told [Cave], she said ‘I feel so bad leaving Dale Street.’ I said ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and replace you, I’m just going to try and work my personality with the children.’”

Maguire said the goal is to identify a permanent principal for Dale Street by the week of Jan. 30.

Elementary Principal Search Tentative Timeline:

• Week of Nov. 28 – Advertise vacancy with closing date of Dec. 30.
• Week of Nov. 28 – Notify opportunity for screening committee participation and respond by Wednesday, Dec. 28.
• Dec. 30 – Applications close.
• Week of Jan. 2 – Prepare packets.
• Week of Jan. 9 – Screening committee organizational meeting.
• Week of Jan. 16 – Screening committee completes interviews and forwards finalists to superintendent.
• Week of Jan. 23 – Finalist interviews; school visits; site visits.
• Week of Jan. 30 – Appointment.