Sac City names interim Kennedy High principal. Some parents say they weren’t told
Sacramento City Unified School District has tapped a former Hiram Johnson High School assistant principal to serve as interim principal of John F. Kennedy High School at the start of upcoming school year, filling the role of Principal Reginald Brown.
In a Facebook post last week, district board member Taylor Kayatta said Jill Thom will temporarily take over the role after Brown went on a leave of absence at the end of the last school year.
Kayatta wrote that “If and when we go out to hire a new permanent Principal,” that the district will ensure the selection process will include substantial community input.
Brown served as principal of Martin Luther King Jr. K-8 School from 2008 to 2013 and of John Still K-8 School from 2013 to 2022, before becoming principal of Kennedy in March 2022. While the district did not disclose the reason for Brown’s leave, calling it a personnel matter, some parents said they were frustrated by what they viewed as inadequate communication from the district.
The board member said his post followed a message the district had sent to Kennedy families shortly beforehand. Sacha Monpere was among the parents who commented on Kayatta’s post, saying she had not received any communication from the school about either the principal’s leave or the selection of an interim principal.
“When I read that post from the school board member, that was the first time I’d heard anything about the principal being gone,” Monpere told The Sacramento Bee on Tuesday.
“In general the school has almost no communication with parents.”
Alexander Goldberg, a district spokesperson, pointed to two messages sent Thursday through ParentSquare, an app schools use to communicate with families and staff.
The first, from SCUSD instructional assistant superintendent Tuan Duong, notified recipients of Brown’s leave and announced Thom’s appointment as interim principal. In the second, Thom introduced herself to the JFK groups.
Monpere said neither she nor her husband received the messages. She said that when she searched ParentSquare for the recipient groups shown in a screenshot shared in the comments on Kayatta’s post, the groups did not appear as options available to her.
Monpere said Kayatta’s social media posts should not be parents’ only source of information about developments at the school.
“That’s not really how information should be coming,” she continued. “It’s disempowering.”
