Principal for the Day: Ormond Beach Police chief, captain and community leaders take the helm of local schools

The FUTURES Foundation held the annual Principal for the Day program in local schools on Wednesday, Nov. 13, culminating in a thank you luncheon in DeLand.

  • By Michele Meyers
  • | 1:00 p.m. November 19, 2024
  • Ormond Beach Observer
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Ormond Beach Police Chief Jesse Godfrey focused on the task at hand and unlocked the door to the Ormond Beach Elementary School kindergarten class. Principal Shannon Hay led him into the room as teacher Michelle Tomlinson went through a writing assignment with her students.

Godfrey was Principal for the Day.

Principal for the Day is a program instituted by the FUTURES Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to enhancing Volusia County public schools’ programs and activities by connecting them with local businesses and community leaders. The program is based on their original educator-intern program that was discontinued in 2014. In 2021, it was revived with the goal to get a business partner to go into every public school in Volusia County, including Volusia Online Learning and the two alternative education schools — Highbanks Learning Center and Riverview Learning Center.

This year, there were 70 schools that had business partners, with 68 different businesses or organizations represented.

FUTURES Foundation Assistant Director Stephanie Parks said the Principal for the Day program goes back to their founding mission and vision to engage the business and civic community to promote and achieve educational excellence in Volusia County public schools. She said foundation leaders see themselves as the agency that connects the business community to the schools in a lot of different capacities.

“For us, the goal was to provide a really tangible way for business partners to get that boots-on-the-ground, on-the-campus experience to really see the different challenges principals face on the school campuses,” she said. “They can see the different ways that a principal acts as the CEO, the disciplinarian, the mom, the dad, the cheerleader, the encourager, the shoulder to cry on for the entire campus. So really it was the chance to give business partners that ability to see a behind the scenes look at what goes into being the CEO of a school.”

Hay requested Godfrey to be the Principal for the Day because of his existing relationship in the community. She said she enjoyed her time with him because they learned their roles are very similar. 

...You really get an appreciation of how many life lessons the teachers reinforce on an daily, even hourly basis. Once you see it as an outsider, especially as a grownup, you really have a profound new appreciation for elementary school teachers, especially because those are the formative years." — JESSE GODFREY, Ormond Beach Police Chief

“It was great for him to see the work that we do but it was also nice to spend time collaborating with him because he was telling me some of the procedures that they have for the city and for the police department,” she said. “I’m actually taking some of his advice and incorporating it in a succession plan for our school.”

Going into it, Godfrey said he did not know what the principal’s responsibilities were. He said he knew there were obvious factors involved, including the children and the teachers whose mission is to get them to the next grade level. As he began his duties as principal, he realized that all of the things he was taught as a student started to come back to him.

“It brought back so many cool memories from my childhood,” he said. “You really get an appreciation of how many life lessons the teachers reinforce on a daily, even hourly basis. Once you see it as an outsider, especially as a grownup, you really have a profound new appreciation for elementary school teachers, especially because those are the formative years.”

During his day with Hay, Godfrey said they conducted two internal investigations regarding improper student conduct along with two medical calls and fed over 100 kids. It was non-stop — go, go, go.

“I give all the credit to principal Hay,” he said. “The most amazing part, other than the education piece, were all of the life lessons she taught along the way in that four hours. She is reinforcing all the basic stuff that we’re taught but, maybe as grownups, we kind of lose sight of those and take them for granted. When you see it in action, it’s impressive.”

Ormond Beach Police Captain Chris Roos was Pine Trail Elementary School’s Principal for the Day. He shadowed Principal Charlie Bynum, who took him into teacher Katherine Reynolds’ gifted class, where he helped students explore the properties of mass. He then ventured into a blacklight art class with teacher Sarah Marzilli.

Tom Caffrey is a realtor with Realty Pros Assured and also the president of Ormond Beach MainStreet. He was the Principal for the Day at Ormond Beach Middle School and shadowed Principal Heather Iannarelli. He experienced the organized chaos of a class change in the courtyard, an instrument warmup in the advanced band class with teacher Meghan Hottel and a video demonstration in Nikolas Baldwin’s Information Technology class.

On Aug. 5, Kevin Berry started his first year as principal of Pathways Elementary School, so it was his first experience with the program. His Principal for the Day was Carrie Torres, the founder and director of Provision Packs — a nonprofit food supplementary program aimed to supply nutritional assistance to low income children and their families, according to their website.

Berry said he took Torres through some highlights of what a typical day would be. She visited classrooms and engaged with students ranging from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. Torres said she felt like a rock star when she walked into the school cafeteria and greeted the kids.

“She looks like a celebrity and so the kids treated her as a celebrity,” Berry said. “I think she really enjoyed that and we enjoyed having her there as a set of extra hands. It was powerful to see the interactions.”

He said there are a lot of people in the community that want to do good but do not always know the needs of a school and the best way to offer their support.

“By having her join our school, she gets to see the kinds of good that is relevant and what we need right now,” he said. “We’re lucky because our community is involved through relationships. Without those relationships, you don’t really know what people need or what people want. It’s about the connection between business partners and the future business partners — our kids. Our community is pretty unique to a lot of places in our state.”

Parks said giving community leaders an opportunity to obtain first-hand knowledge of the inner workings of schools is instrumental in, not only their advocation for Volusia County public schools, but also their consideration of ways to be supportive. If interested, applications for Principal for the Day are available at the beginning of the school year in August. 

Florida Healthcare Plans has been the presenting sponsor for the fourth consecutive year. Parks said she is thankful for their support which enables the FUTURES Foundation to host a catered luncheon for participants following the Principal for the Day program.

“I feel like this being our fourth year doing it, in this iteration, we hit our stride,” Parks said. “Now we have figured out the nuts and bolts of logistics and placing so let’s keep moving forward and see if we need to level-up in any way or want to do something a little different. This is the year we got it right in terms of event-planning, program application and partnerships.”

 

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