Check It Out:

What are your favorite local places for shopping, pampering or entertaining? Vote now in this year's Best Of Holiday Shopping readers' choice poll.

2 finalists named for Patrick Henry High principal job

The finalists will meet the school community at a public meeting Monday evening. The school board may vote on the appointment Tuesday night.

Join the conversation

Share your thoughts on the Learning Lines blog.

Annie McCallum | 981-3227

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Two finalists for the Patrick Henry High School principal position were named Wednesday and the community will have an opportunity to meet them next week.

Kathy Duncan, principal of the Roanoke Technical Education Center, and Joe Jablonski , currently a Patrick Henry assistant principal, have been named finalists, school system spokesman Justin McLeod announced in an email.

A community meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. Monday in the school’s auditorium to introduce Duncan and Jablonski. McLeod said a recording with the news was telephoned to parents Wednesday morning. He did not provide information on the meeting’s format, saying the system wouldn’t releas e details before the meeting.

Current Patrick Henry Principal Connie Ratcliffe is retiring after six years leading the school, one of the largest in the Roanoke Valley.

Duncan, 53, has been the Roanoke Technical Education Center principal and the system’s career technical education director since July 2009. The center operates in a separate building on the Patrick Henry campus and offers career and technical training.

According to information from the school system, before becoming principal, Duncan was a health and medical science teacher at Patrick Henry from 1999 to 2007 and later a teacher on administrative assignment at ROTEC.

Duncan’s background prior to public education is in medicine. According to information on the ROTEC website, she was a critical care respiratory therapist and also taught at Jefferson College of Health Sciences.

She has an associate’s degree from SUNY Medical Center , a bachelor’s degree from Mary Baldwin College and a master’s degree from Virginia Tech.

Jablonski, 40, has been with Roanoke schools since 2007. According to information from the district, he was an English language learners specialist at Lucy Addison Middle School for two months before becoming an assistant principal at Patrick Henry.

Before coming to the Roanoke Valley, Jablonski was a teacher and administrator in Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nev. According to information from Roanoke City Public Schools, he taught for six years and was dean of students for two years at schools in Nevada.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Jablonski taught English and history, and coached soccer.

He has two bachelor’s degrees from the University of New Mexico and two master’s degrees from University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

Superintendent Rita Bishop said recently that she is aiming to have the school board vote on a new principal on Tuesday. The search for a new leader has been under way since February, when Ratcliffe announced her upcoming retirement .

Saturday, September 14, 2013