WESTWOOD —
“The number one thing about Eric Hale is that he’s a tireless worker and he loves the kids,” said Garry McPeek, who was Hale’s immediate supervisor in his two years as building administrator of Fairview Middle School.
“He’s not a clock-watcher, and no matter what people think, this is not a business where you work from eight to four and get summers off,” said McPeek, who is principal at Fairview High and who mentored Hale during his first two years as an administrator.
“Building administrator” is really another word for “principal,” but as of this school year Hale can use the actual title, having been hired to head up Fairview Elementary. He replaces Greg Sallie, who retired.
“I’m probably the luckiest person I know. I haven’t worked a day in my life,” Hale said Thursday during a break in a teachers’ training session.
“This is a dream come true.”
It is a dream he traces back to his own boyhood as the son of a single mother with two other older children, living in the Hillcrest Apartments.
A 2001 Fairview graduate, Hale said he never left and doesn’t want to leave. “I live here, I coach here, my lifetime friends are here. It’s a very special place, a very special school and community.”
Hale earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Morehead State University and started his teaching career at the elementary he now heads. Then he moved into administration, overseeing the middle school, which is across the street from the high school in the former Renfroe Elementary building.
His two years there were akin to an internship, McPeek said, and prepared him well for principalship.
“The perspective is a lot different in an administrative role, in the sense that the building is your classroom,” Hale said.
He is working on cementing relationships and rapport with his entire staff and with the students themselves once school starts Thursday. “Having a great staff makes your job easier, and this is second to none the best elementary staff in the area,” he said.
Kentucky schools are facing new, more rigorous, academic standards, and Hale said he will hold Fairview students to the standards. “We treat our kids as individuals. We have high expectations. Learning is not negotiable. Excellence is demanded.”
In situations of generational poverty — families that have lived in poverty for two or more generations — education and positive role models are the keys to breaking the cycle, he said.
Hale thinks he can be such a role model; he is the first person in his family to graduate from college and has filled his off-hours with coaching of multiple sports in elementary, middle and high school. “Teaching and coaching are one and the same because it is all about the kids and being a good role model for them,” he said.
Hale has a fiancee, Brittany Mulvaney, and an 18-month-old daughter, Addison.
MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or
(606) 326-2652.
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