The rich environment of learning includes a real push to get students to take advanced placement courses, McNiff said.
Sean McNiff spent Wednesday at South Hadley High School, where he is a finalist for the position of principal.SOUTH HADLEY – Sean McNiff, one of two finalists in the search for a principal for South Hadley High School, spent Wednesday at the school speaking with teachers and students, touring the building, and meeting with the public in the evening.
McNiff has been assistant principal at Marblehead High School for two years.
He lives in Shutesbury with his wife, an artist, and their four children, ages 2 to 11. He commutes more than two hours each way to work, rising at 3:45 a.m.
On Wednesday evening, McNiff told a group of about two dozen that he had been impressed by the “positive atmosphere” among the students he spoke with during the day, and by the “really rich environment of learning,” which includes “a real push to get students to take advanced placement courses.”
He told one questioner that, like South Hadley, Marblehead High doesn’t get credit for its high academic standards, with some parents sending their kids to private school when they reach the high school level.
“We were ranked 23rd in Massachusetts by Boston Magazine – and we still face questions about academic rigor,” said McNiff.
He said part of this perception comes when a school is also very good in athletics, as South Hadley High is.
He said Marblehead is fighting back by actively going to parents, showing them around the school, informing them, much the way a private school would do to recruit students.
“This school offers a tremendous amount from an academic standpoint,” he said of South Hadley High School.
He said the school has special challenges, including – in a reference to Phoebe Prince, a freshman who committed suicide last year after enduring alleged ongoing bullying from several classmates – “the continuing healing process that’s going on in the community.”
McNiff majored in English at Fitchburg State College and taught in the Fitchburg Public Schools for eight years.
He was assistant principal at Lowell Catholic High School, where he helped create a community service curriculum and directed a community service learning program that involved all students and staff at the school.
McNiff earned a law degree from New England School of Law in Boston.
During his first year as assistant principal at Marblehead High, he and another assistant principal shared the duties of principal when that post was temporarily vacant.
The other finalist for principal of South Hadley High School, Richard Manley, visited South Hadley Tuesday.
The search for a principal began when current South Hadley High Principal Daniel T. Smith announced in February that he would leave his position at the end of this school year.
