District 202 has officially announced Assistant Principal Ross Draper as the next Principal of North on February 8.

Draper was announced as Principal at the bi-monthly District Board Meeting at Riverview Elementary. He was nominated by the search committee to the Board in the closed session of the meeting before formally being named Principal.

“Mr. Draper has a lot of genuineness to him about his interest in the job, the students at North, and what goes on at North,” said Superintended Lane Abrell. “He demonstrated a lot of connections with students, also teachers and staff. He seemed very much authentic in his willingness of wanting to become the next Principal and improving upon the things that are already going on at North.”

Draper is set to replace Principal Ray Epperson after Epperson took a new position in the District Office. Epperson had served for seven years as Principal.

“The one thing I’ve taken away [from Epperson’s tenure] is how to run an organized building, and his leadership, being a good role model and a mentor for the staff and students,” said Draper.

Draper will begin his term as Principal on July 1st. During that time, he will look to gain insight into how he will handle the position as well as perspective from Epperson on what he has done well.

“The first thing is to get acclimated to what the new responsibilities will be,” said Draper. “ It’ll be nice to have Mr. Epperson in the building over the next six months to bounce ideas and get the lay of the land so to speak and to meet with some of the kids and the staff and get their input into what Plainfield North is doing and see if they’d like to change anything.”

Draper comes to the position with nearly two decades of educational experience. He began teaching in Oswego in 1998 as a PE teacher before becoming a Department Chair there. He was hired as an Assistant Principal at North in 2009.

The Search Committee originally sought to name a candidate at the January 25 Board Meeting, but could not come to a decision beforehand. Draper was chosen over two other final candidates, including one other in district candidate as well as another administrator from out of district.

“It was just the scheduling of interviews and actually doing the interviews,” said Abrell. “ It wasn’t because anyone was changing their minds or anything of that nature. We just wanted to be very deliberate in the process.”

Abrell believes that hiring an internal candidate, as opposed to the others who came from different schools, offers a unique set of advantages.

“We like to promote from within,” said Abrell. “We did go through the selection process, the interview process, and clearly Mr. Draper came out at the top of that. An internal candidate knows the building, he knows the teachers, and a lot of the traditions, so it worked out well.”

Despite the delayed search, Draper remained confident in his chances to earn the position and believes the process went well.

“It was nice to have familiar faces in the interview committee,” said Draper. “I felt like I’d been supported by the staff and the administration at the district level and I really appreciate the opportunity that Dr. Abrell and the Board have given me.”