The Park Hill Board of Education’s first African-American member was sworn in last week at the board’s reorganizational meeting.
Voters re-elected Kimberlee Ried, with 23.36% of the votes, and Brandy Woodley, with 22.36% of the votes. Ried and Woodley took the oath of office at the Thursday, April 15 meeting.
During reorganization, Janice Bolin was elected president, Bart Klein as vice president and Ried as treasurer. Ried will begin her role as treasurer at the beginning of the fiscal year in July. Scott Monsees will join Bolin as Missouri School Boards’ Association delegate, with Woodley as the alternate MSBA delegate.
Several administrator appointments were also approved at the meeting:
Missy DeDonder, currently the assistant principal at Walden Middle School, will be the new Walden principal.
DeDonder came to work in Park Hill in 1995 as a middle school social studies and English language arts teacher. In 2004, she became an assistant principal at Congress Middle School, where she stayed until becoming one of Walden’s first assistant principals when it opened in 2019.
Tom Garth, who is currently serving as interim assistant principal at Park Hill High School, will be assistant principal next year. One of his duties as assistant principal is to direct the school’s athletics and activities.
Garth came to Park Hill in 2008 as a teacher at Park Hill South High School. There, he served as an administrative intern, department chair and coach. In 2014, he moved to PHHS. He was an interim assistant principal at PHHS for the 2015-2016 and 2020-2021 school years.
Diane Markley, who is currently interim assistant principal at Park Hill South, will be the new assistant principal. Markley came to Park Hill to teach orchestra at Park Hill South and Lakeview Middle School in 2011.
A director of health services was also appointed. Tammy Saylor, the district’s current health services coordinator, was promoted to director. Saylor came to Park Hill in 2007. She was an elementary and middle school nurse before becoming the lead and supervising nurse for the district.
During this pandemic, Saylor has coordinated partnerships with the Kansas City and Platte County health departments, designed district mitigation strategies, led contact tracing, set up the testing site and spearheaded vaccination efforts.
Before Park Hill, Saylor owned her own medical consulting business and worked as a registered nurse at Children’s Mercy Hospital and North Kansas City Hospital.