Migration
Hainerberg principal reassigned days before end of school year
Stars and Stripes
June 10, 2014
Hainerberg Elementary School Principal Penelope Miller-Smith congratulates Hainerberg second-graders for money raised during a bake sale in this April 2011 photo. (Jennifer Clampet/U.S. Army)
Hainerberg Elementary School Principal Penelope Miller-Smith congratulates Hainerberg second-graders for money raised during a bake sale in this April 2011 photo. (Jennifer Clampet/U.S. Army)
Hainerberg Elementary School in Wiesbaden, Germany. (Eric Brown/Stars and Stripes)
KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — Penelope Miller-Smith, the principal of Hainerberg Elementary School in Wiesbaden, has been temporarily reassigned to the Kaiserslautern district office for the remainder of the school year, school officials announced Monday.
Miller-Smith was reassigned effective June 3, said Department of Defense Dependents Schools-Europe spokesman Bob Purtiman. The last day of school for DODDS-Europe students is Thursday.
Purtiman said Miller-Smith’s reassignment was part of a “supervisory inquiry” into the current school management.
“Some issues were brought to” the attention of Dell McMullen the Kaiserslautern district superintendent, he said. “She’s looking into them.”
In a letter dated Monday to the parents of Hainerberg school students, McMullen apologized for any inconveniences caused by the principal’s reassignment so late in the school year.
“I would not have made this decision unless I believed it was absolutely necessary,” she wrote, without elaborating on the reasons for the move.
Jeff Pond, the assistant principal of Wiesbaden Middle School, is stepping in as the acting principal at Hainerberg through the remainder of the school year, Purtiman said.
Miller-Smith is in her fourth year as principal of Hainerberg. She has a variety of teaching experience in elementary education, special education and gifted and talented students, according to her online DODDS-Europe biography.