Judy McNeill Archives

Catharine Mallanda, Walton High School Principal — *Catherine Mallanda, new Walton principal*

Walton High School has a new principal who will be very familiar to students when she takes over at the start of the new school year.

She’s assistant principal Catherine Mallanda, who’s been at Walton for 17 years.

Mallanda was one of several principal and administrative appointments made Tuesday morning by the Cobb Board of Education.

She succeeds Judy McNeill, who is retiring after 30 years at Walton, including the last 10 as principal. The change is effective Aug. 1, the first day of the 2018-19 school year in the Cobb County School District.

Mallanda, who had earned $97,721 annually in her previous role, will have a yearly salary of $131,303 as Walton principal. She hold degrees from Georgia Tech and the University of West Georgia and a Ph.D. from Southern Mississippi.

She also was a classroom teacher at Walton and McEachern High School before becoming an administrator in 2003.

Some other East Cobb schools also will be getting new principals.

Sprayberry High School is one of them. Joseph Sharp has resigned, effective June 15, to move to Alabama. He will be succeeded by Sara Griffin, a current Sprayberry assistant principal, who starts June 18.

Griffin will be paid $112,965 annually as principal. She had earned $81,848 as an assistant principal last year at Sprayberry. She also was an assistant principal and teacher at Kell High School.

Griffin earned degrees from Georgia Tech, Georgia State and Kennesaw State.

Longtime Dickerson Middle School principal Carole Brink is retiring as of Aug. 1, but her replacement has not been named.

*Felicia Angelle is leaving Shallowford Falls ES for the CCSD central office.*

James Rawls, who has been assistant principal at Cooper Middle School, becomes the new principal at Daniell Middle School on July 1. Former principal David Nelson was recently reassigned to become principal at Pine Mountain Middle School.

Rawls earned $79,839 as an assistant principal at Cooper since 2004. His salary at Daniell will be $103,083. He has degrees from Armstrong Atlantic State University and Argosy University and previously was a teacher and administrator in Atlanta and Savannah public schools.

Shallowford Falls Elementary School also will be getting a new principal to be named later. Felicia Angelle is leaving to become the CCSD’s academic division director of instruction, innovation, teaching and learning. She starts her new position Aug. 1.

Dr. Tricia Patterson has resigned as Tritt Elementary School principal to become director of the Marietta City School’s STEM Academy. Her successor comes from elsewhere in East Cobb. Karen Carstens, who had been an assistant principal at Powers Ferry Elementary School, begins her new duties tomorrow.

Carstens, who also has been an assistant principal at Sope Creek Elementary School, had been earning $82,017. A previous teacher at Shallowford Falls, her salary there as principal will be $102,182.

Assistant principals on the move

The school board also made the following appointments involving East Cobb schools below the level of principal:

Mount Bethel Elementary School teacher and administrator Jaime Davis to assistant principal there;
Vaughn Elementary School principal Kevin Carpenter is now assistant principal at Powers Ferry;
Sedalia Park Elementary School assistant principal Zachary Mathis to the same position at Vaughn;
Former North Cobb principal Joe Horton is now an assistant principal at Sprayberry.

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The new Walton High School building is open, and on Sunday afternoon, the day before classes were set to begin, several hundred students, parents, elected officials and others celebrating ribbon-cutting ceremonies and an open house.

Among the honored guests, in addition to local officials, were Georgia School Superintendent Richard Woods, U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson and newly elected Congresswoman Karen Handel.

The three-story, $48 million classroom and administrative office structure replaces a 42-year-old main building that has been overcrowded for years. The old building will eventually give way to the second phase of the Walton project that is to include a new gymnasium and fine arts building scheduled for completion in 2019.

The 300,000-plus-square-foot main building is around 40 percent bigger than what it is replacing. Walton opened in 1975, at a time when rapid growth in East Cobb was vastly overburdening school capacity.

Isakson, whose children and granddaughter attended Walton, told the audience that while he was working as an East Cobb real estate broker in the early 1970s, then-Cobb school superintendent Kermit Keenum warned him that new schools in the area—especially high schools—had to be built, and fast.

Isakson helped the school system with finding land, and noted that the Bill Murdock Road properties on which Walton and nearby Dodgen Middle School are located cost around $4,500.

“That would cost at least 10 times that amount today,” said Isakson, who was formerly the president of Northside Realty. He called the new Walton building “a pearl of beauty.”

He was among the speakers who kept referencing the education SPLOST (or special local option sales tax) funding that paid for the new Walton building. Isakson said more than $6.8 billion has been spent on school construction across Georgia with SPLOST funding, and he thanked Cobb leaders for leading the way in changing the state constitution to allow for such referenda.

Isakson also said it’s not just bricks and mortar, but “teachers, parents and students” that make a school community strong.

Walton High School