RGHS principal ousted by schedule chaos

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Fallout from the scheduling meltdown at Rio Grande High School continued Wednesday when an administrator from the Albuquerque Public Schools central office took over as interim principal.

Principal Cynthia Challberg-Hale, who took over RGHS during the summer and scrapped the previous student class schedules, is being reassigned within the district, APS Superintendent Winston Brooks said Wednesday morning. He also said Hale took the news in stride and is taking the rest of the week off.

Replacing her is Linda Sink, the district's chief academic officer. Brooks resisted calls to fire Hale and had said he wouldn't make the change. But on Wednesday he said he now feels the personnel shuffle is the best thing to do for the school and students.

"I think in all fairness to Ms. Hale, she deserves a bit of time to sit down with her family and talk about what she wants to do and so that decision has not been made," Brooks said at a morning news conference.

Sink has been with APS for more than 30 years and is a former interim superintendent. Brooks said Sink asked to step in and take over.

Hale came under fire from the first day of school when student schedules weren't ready. Parents said students weren't in class or were simply in the wrong classes. APS has insisted all along that simply wasn't the case and students have in fact been learning the whole time.

"People can assume all sorts of things but I can tell you all that it's not one thing that happened, it's just a whole combination of things happened and sometimes you've got to say it's time to cut our loses and move forward," Brooks explained.

On Tuesday the 1,700 students received their new schedules, and 700 of them quickly requested changes with one senior telling News 13 he'd been assigned to a freshman class he'd already taken.

APS said it's giving priority to schedule-change requests from seniors who say they don't have the classes they need to graduate.

The job opening for the principal position has already been posted. Brooks said this time around a committee of parents, students, teachers and APS officials will interview candidates and make their recommendations to him about whom they think he should hire.

APS also announced Wednesday that since the end of last week, 12 students have been granted transfers out of  RGHS. Some will go to another school in the district, and six have opted to leave the school system all together.

Through this scheduling debacle, APS has learned three students who graduated recently didn't have the necessary credits to do so. The district hasn't decided what to do about it if anything at all.