Kirk Wrinkle
By Rob Heidrick and Kelsey Wilkinson
Friday, 03 July 2009
Kirk Wrinkle, Pflugerville High School Principal
- Experience: Four years as assistant principal at PHS, 24 years in education
- Education: Bachelor’s from Angelo State University; master’s from Texas State University
- What are your main goals for the next school year?
- I think every school in Texas struggles with math and science scores on the TAKS test, so that is definitely an area that we are going to continue to work on. Other than that, I think we made huge strides this year in communication with the community, with parents in particular, and I want to continue that.
- What are the biggest challenges educators face today?
- There is always so much competition with the outside world and our kids — anywhere from television, iPods, cell phones and things they’re able to do that eat away at their time to study and get prepared for the next level.
- How do you hope to confront that challenge?
- It starts in the classroom. Our teachers have to be very engaging. They have to get the kids involved in what’s going on in class. Also, more than half of our students participate in some kind of extracurricular activity, and that gives them a bind to the school.
- What are some things that people would be surprised to know about your job as principal?
- Our time is not our time — our time becomes everyone else’s time. We are expected to be problem solvers for everything, whether it is a teacher, parent or student issue. We become firemen a lot of times, which is not a good thing to become in our job, because we spend a lot of time putting out fires instead of working on the really important things. A challenge for all of us is to prioritize all of the things that are really important and not be at the mercy of those things that are not as important.
- How has the growth in enrollment influenced how the high school will be managed?
- Principals always want more teachers, because that’s the front line. We always want good people to be teaching those kids, and the more that we have, the better it is. The school is growing, and if we can’t hire additional teachers, that will affect us in the classroom. That’s new blood coming in. They have new experiences. They bring different things to the table than the ones we currently have, and you’re always looking for new people to improve your school.
- How would you rate the effectiveness of the new curriculum in its first year?
- This past spring, the teachers went in and made some changes to the new curriculum. After living with it for a year, they saw some problems and they fixed them. They were mainly just tweaking what they worked with last year. Hopefully, the more used to it they are, the better it will be the second time around.
