With the new school year, changes have been made to the administration and policies at the school. Kelsey Lantz joined the high school staff as an assistant principal, furthering her career in education.
“I started off with teaching at Windber. I was there for three years and taught physics, biology and math,” Lantz said. “Then, I got hired at Bedford and was there for eight years. I taught Algebra l and ll, and some geometry. My last year I was assistant principal and now I’m here.”
Lantz was hired by administration after a thorough interviewing and hiring process.
“I first applied to be the junior high sixth grade principal, but I did not get hired for that,” Lantz said. “This position of assistant principal became available at the high school, and I applied online. I had an interview and the other principals were all there. Then there was a waiting process to get it approved by the school board and that was it.”
Superintendent Brad Hatch felt that Lantz was well prepared for this role before she was hired.
“We wanted to have someone with an administrative level of authority and experience, specifically in truancy and improving attendance,” Hatch said. “We reclassified that position as an assistant principal who would have the authority to go out and work with families on improving attendance. Ms. Lantz has had some significant experience working in these roles, and she very clearly stood out as the best candidate for that role.”
Hatch believes Lantz will be able to aid in solving attendance issues.
“It is not meant to be punitive, and we don’t want kids to think we are punishing them,” Hatch said. “We want to be figuring these things out, more on an individualized level and find out why kids aren’t coming to school and really getting to the root of the issue. We want to work with them and their families to figure out solutions for them to improve their outcomes and attendance.”
Assistant Superintendent Mark Harrington also feels having an assistant principal focused on attendance will help in improving the school as a whole.
“We have a lot of attendance meetings with kids who aren’t attending school,” Harrington said. We set goals of how we can help them improve their attendance. We identify what the roadblocks are or why they aren’t in an ACA setting or in person school and different things like that.”
Going from a reasonably smaller school to Altoona has been an adjustment for Lantz.
“Bedford is about a fourth of the size of Altoona, maybe even smaller than that. It is definitely an undertaking,” Lantz said.
Through this adjustment, Lantz is taking time to adjust to her specific responsibilities as assistant principal. Lantz will serve as the Advanced Placement (AP) coordinator, as well as being the overseer of attendance.
“I really enjoy working with kids,” Lantz said. “We want to find out why they aren’t coming to school and what the underlying issue is. I was AP coordinator at Bedford, which was on a smaller scale, but I really enjoyed seeing what the kids are doing in AP, the process and how they end up doing on the test.”
