DISTRUST OF FAIRFIELD PRINCIPAL CONTINUES TO RUN DEEP WITH PARENTS AND EDUCATORS
By Gregory J. Lamoureux
FAIRFIELD: About three dozen teachers and 75 parents packed the school’s gymnasium on Monday evening to complain about the principal, and if what parents and teachers had to say is true, of Fairfield’s principal is lackluster at best when it comes to running the K-8 school.
From returning phone calls, to managing the behavior of students to keep other students safe, the parents and teachers in the tightly knit community say Jill Ballou isn’t doing her job and should be fired.
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Ballou is in the process of finishing her first year as the head of the Fairfield Elementary School.
In the beginning of April, representatives from the Fairfield Education Association approached the School Board with concerns about Ballou’s performance and requested that her contract not be renewed.
This was too little too late. That contract had been renewed by the newly formed Maple Run School District in February, according to Superintendent Kevin Dirth.
Liza Smith, a parent of a Fairfield student began by asking why Superintendent Dirth felt that Ballou was the right person to continue leading the educators.
“Jill has a passion for education,” Dirth said, “Jill has a passion for students. I have observed her with students… she cares about them and cares about the school.”
Several voters turned the topic of their distrust, for the principal and the way the situation has been treated, onto the current Fairfield School Board as well as the Maple Run School District Board, pointing out that they would never have supported an Act 46 consolidation if they knew the new board would be as disconcerned with their school as they are.
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Perhaps one of the most impassioned comments of the evening came from Andrew Evens, who is retiring after this school year, at least in part because of Ballou.
Evens read a letter from the Fairfield Educators Association that addressed the problems with Ballou.
“This year has all fallen apart,” Evans began, “these stories that parents have shared is not the Fairfield that I know- the Fairfield we all know.”
Four women traveled to the Fairfield meeting on Monday evening from the town of Warren, where Ballou was a principal last year until she was fired under similar situations as what is going on in Fairfield.
This is not the entire news story. Pick up a copy of the County Courier, on newsstands now for the remainder of this story.
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