Clark steps in to oversee PSJHS

Following the departure of Ron Hensley as principal of Port St. Joe Jr./Sr. High School, Assistant Principal Jenny Clark has stepped into the role as administrator in charge.

It’s been Clark’s first year at the school, after a two decade long career in Suwannee County , where she handled challenges that included teaching in classrooms from pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade, as well as being a support facilitator, academic coach and guidance counselor, a role she began the school year at PSJHS doing.

Ashley Summerlin, the school’s longtime assistant principal, has returned to that role.

Superintendent Jim Norton, who made the appointments, said it is eventually up to the school board to decide on who will fill the positions through the end of the school year.

“She’s doing a great job,” said Norton. “We’re really not missing a beat when it comes to veteran experience. In the meantime everything’s going well.”

Originally from Live Oak, she earned her bachelor’s in education from Florida A & M University, and later a master’s degree in education leadership from the American College of Education.

She and her husband, who works at Tyndall Air Force Base for Gulf Coast Electric, live in Mexico Beach. “We’ve been vacationing here for years,” Clark said. “We fell in love with it and don’t ever want to leave.”

In the announcement earlier this month, Norton wrote that “following consultation and discussion with Mr. Ron Hensley, there has been a mutual parting of ways regarding his role as principal…. We want to be absolutely clear that, contrary to reckless and slanderous rumors circulating on social media, there is no criminal aspect to this matter. We ask our community to rely on facts rather than speculation and to allow the rumor mill to be put to rest.

PSJHS’s former principal Ron Hensley “Gulf District Schools appreciates Mr. Hensley’s service to our students, staff, families, and community, and we sincerely wish him every success in his future endeavors,” it read.

Topping the agenda for school district officials for the next six weeks will be ensuring at the Nov. 3 ballot box the countywide passage, by a simple majority, of a half-cent sales tax.

While the district cannot lawfully campaign on behalf of the sales tax passage, they decided unanimously to place the measure before voters and Norton and other individuals have voiced support for increasing the sales tax, which will bring in about $1.5 million annually to be spent on capital outlay, such as construction and major maintenance of school facilities, and upgrading school security systems, safety equipment, and classroom technology. Funds cannot be spent on general operating expenses, staff salaries, or everyday instructional materials.

Currently, the school district does not levy the full ad valorem property tax millage it is entitled to for capital outlay, trimming it by a small amount in each of the past eight years, and Norton believes that percentage could be lowered even further in the event the sales tax passes.

“I’m optimistic that will afford us the likelihood we can trim the millage rate. I’m not willing to give a tax increase to ad valorem,” he said. “It (the sales tax) qualifies as an alternative means of funding, we don’t levy over half what we have the authority to.”

Neighboring Franklin County was among the first area school districts to approve a half-cent sales tax, and it has been a popular option for districts in the region, including Bay County and, if passed in November, for Gadsden and Leon.

“Bay County collects a lot off of Gulf County residents,” Norton said. “Visitors to our county would pay the lion’s share of it.”

He also stressed that if the sales tax measure passes, it would qualify the district to secure new school construction dollars for use in constructing a state-of-the-art school in the Wewahitchka area to serve the northern portion of the county.

“Wewa is the oldest (building) in the state of Florida besides the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind,” Norton said.

Clark steps in to oversee PSJHS

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