Michelle Carver has been selected by John W. Bate Middle School’s School-Based Decision Making (SBDM) council to be the school’s next principal. 

Her scheduled start date is July 1. 

“It’s a privilege to work with the students here,” she said. “It’s a privilege, and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to work with the staff. We have a really good staff, strong staff, and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to build them up more and work with these kids and strengthen what we have going on.”

Carver has been assistant principal for eight years and is excited for the opportunity to continue and expand on what the school has been working on, including block scheduling for reading and math, and systems to track data to help target where students need to improve in reading, math and behavior. 

She’s excited that Bate has been able to hire three additional math teachers to help with block scheduling and has also hired a behavior interventionist, reading interventionist and math interventionist.

Something the school used to have that she wants to bring back is a leadership team made up of teachers and staff members that served as advisory for the principal to help brainstorm ideas to solve ongoing issues and seek out support and ideas from colleagues. 

Guidance Counselor Sammi Anders said Carver’s mind is “always set on Bate Middle,” she truly cares about the school and she’s worked hard to improve it and invest herself in it. 

“There’s so much behind the scenes and under the radar that Michelle does,” Anders said.

Carver said, “I care about the staff and the students, and at this point, it’s not that someone else couldn’t do the job, but I don’t know if they could do it as well as I can with the heart that I have for it.” 

Special Education Teacher/Head Girls Softball Coach Tim Breitenbach, a teacher representative on the SBDM, has worked for Danville Schools for about 27 years and has known Carver the whole time she has been assistant principal. 

“She’s put in her time here at Bate,” he said. “She’s been assistant principal for eight years, so we felt that she deserved a shot and had the most experience of all the applicants, and she also said she’s ready.”

In the time he’s known her, his experience is that she’s easy to work with, does a good job helping teachers and does a lot of walk-throughs with them. He said she has done a great job stepping into a leadership role while Bate has had an interim principal. 

“Since she has a lot of experience, she does a really good job with families, communicating with the families,” he said.

He’s happy with the SBDM’s selection and is hopeful Carver will bring consistency and stability to the role.