As the school year has wrapped up, students, faculty, and staff were all struck with the sudden news- that all three of our administration members would not be returning to NAHS for the 24-25 school year.
A previous report from Puma Press broke the news, that according to the district office, Ms. Castro, the school’s beloved principal will be reallocated to be the principal at Canoga Park High School. The other two administrators, assistant principals, Oh and Frnzyan, do not know where their new job post will be.
This was shocking news to everyone. Castro has been principal for 11 years, and has done a remarkable job at NAHS, despite 73% of students coming from low-income households. However, this proved to be a double edged sword. As confirmed by Frnzyan, Castro has been doing such a great job at NAHS, the District wants to make her in charge of Canoga Park, in order to replicate some of the success NAHS has received.
However, many student and faculty members are expressing distaste towards this change. According to Alex Westermiller, a prospective NAHS junior, he believes that NAHS may lose its strong grip on its educational strength. “If he takes our principals from us, the school will slowly fall apart.”
Furthermore school librarian (and Puma Press advisor), Mr. Kent airs concerns about how in-the-dark the entire school was left in. “The worst part of the deal was that Castro was not allowed to tell the students (or staff) until after the year was complete … She deserved a send-off with pride and credit for her acheivements”. As confirmed by a correspondent, even LAUSD board member Scott Schmerelson had no knowledge about this change until everyone else at our school knew. This was a higher up decision which involved keeping everyone in the dark.
This frustration has lead to a protest movement amongst faculty and some students. They believe that they were intentionally left in the dark to avoid protests occurring as drama spreads much quicker when people can mingle in person. However, this has not stopped faculty from protesting for this change. The first protest was at NAHS on June 14, at 8:30am.
The group made signs and protested on the sidewalks about the change. Later on, they stuck billboards all over the school.
However, it became clear that a more direct approach was needed. They decided to protest at the District’s North region office at 9am on a Monday, June 17.
We would later find out that during these protests were occurring, Scott Schmerelson was attending a zoom meeting trying to deal with the situation.
The protestors haven’t given up yet. Led by Mr. Kent, a Remind group called “saveCastro” was created, in order to better organize the movement. “Carvalho thinks because it’s summer he can get away with this. Let’s prove him wrong.” Teacher Ms. Duran publicly stated in the group.
Student’s have also been expressing great frustration to the change. All over Social Media, students can be seen reposting and sharing stories and posts spreading the message far throughout the student populous. Angelina Perez and Alex Westermeller have spearheaded this online movement, with Angelina creating an easy-to-paste email template for students to send to Castro’s bosses, along with numerous Instagram posts, and Alex creating multiple stories that students, many of which have hundreds of followers, have re-posted on their Instagram pages.
With our region administration taking the side of the protestors, there is reason to be optimistic. However, this is a high level district decision and its uncertain if it can be appealed. The best way to describe the situation would be to stay carefully optimistic, on whether Castro and our administration will return.
Only time will tell if all the hard work will pay off.
