Montville High School Principal Reflects on Graduation, Courage and Six Months in Montville

For Chad Ellis, Friday’s weather is more important than all the snow, and all the ice and all the blizzards of winter.

Friday is graduation day, and Ellis, who started as Montville High School’s principal in January, is more concerned about Friday’s weather than the weather of pretty much any other day this year.

He’s watching the weather channel’s website, he’s talking with John Bagioni, who contracts his meteorology services to schools (click here to read a story about him), and he’s hoping.

If the weather’s good, the graduation will be outside. If it’s not good, the whole show moves inside.

And while that’s not the end of the world, “it’s not ideal,” Ellis says, “but it’s been done in the past.”

Weather notwithstanding, Ellis is happy with how his first semester has gone, and happy with what he sees in the graduating class.

“They’re involved in a lot of things,” he says. And “for the most part, they are just nice kids. They don’t get into a lot of trouble, which we’re appreciative of. If they get in trouble,” he says, “it’s low-level stuff.”

The grads’ attitude and willingness to get along eases everything about graduation, Ellis said.

“Everyone is antsy, everyone wants to get going,” he says. But the kids came in for rehearsal and did what they were supposed to do. There was very little messing around, very little time-wasting.

“If it goes like rehearsal,” he says, “it will be great. Other places I’ve been, the rehearsals have not been smooth.”

The structure of graduation is going to be pretty much the same as it’s always been, Ellis says. The class president, the salutatorian and the valedictorian all will speak.

Dr. Kristen Varjas, a professor of counseling psychology at Georgia State, will be the keynote speaker. Varjas graduated from Montville High School in 1987, Ellis says.

It was a pretty good first year overall, he says. “You’re always nervous about how the fit is going to be. I think I fit fairly well,” he says.

“The staff has made me feel pretty welcome.”

He says he thinks parents might still be trying to figure out who he is. Typically, he says, the only interaction they have with him is through letters he sends home with kids, and those are often business letters, which, he says, can have a pretty curt tone.

“The average parent is not really sure what I’m about.”

Ellis says that getting to know more parents, and more people in the community is one of his aims for the coming year.

Another is to improve the school’s climate, and really focus on PBIS – Positive Behavior in the School.

He says he will be doing surveys, finding the areas to focus on, the areas for growthe and improvement, and he will incorporate the results in the school improvement plan.

“Rigor” and “relevance” will be two watchwords for the coming year, Ellis says. He’d like to see average SAT scores (now in the high 400s) rise. He’d like to see the CAP test scores rise.

But these are just one measure of the quality of a school, he says, adding again that the focus is going to be on school climate, including increasing good behavior and addressing bullying issues.

Asked what he would like to say to the graduates, or what he wish someone had said to him, Ellis pauses for a moment and thinks.

“I guess I wish, if I could go back and tell the me from that time things that I knew now, I would say not to be afraid of all the things I was afraid of,” he says. “Have the courage to get out and enjoy life, and make mistakes and be willing to learn from them.”

Graduation is Friday, at Montville High School, starting at 6 p.m.

To read about Chad Ellis's first days at Montville High School, click .

To read about Tom Amanti on one of his last days at Montville High school, click here.