Local News - July 2002

NLHS principal already on board

By ANDIE LEATHERMAN, LTN Staff Writer

July 3, 2002 - The county’s newest high school is a year away from completion but its principal was on the job Monday.

North Lincoln High School Principal Rick Freeman is working to identify staff for key positions like athletic director and media specialist. In August, he will begin meeting with parents, forming a school improvement team. Creating a student handbook and scheduling classes are also on his agenda.

“There’s a lot of work to be done,” Freeman said Tuesday.

Freeman brings 22 years of experience as a high school principal with him. The majority of that time, 16 years, Freeman spent at his alma mater Screven County High School in southeast Georgia. He served as principal of Lincoln County High School in Georgia for four years and most recently as principal of Hillsboro’s Orange High School.

Freeman’s reasons for seeking out the job are two-fold.

The year of planning, minus the demands of a student body, give Freeman the flexibility he needs to help care for his son David Freeman.

The younger Freeman, 20, was paralyzed from the chest down and suffered a brain injury following a March 10 automobile accident. He is currently undergoing rehabilitation.

“Everything just worked out. We felt like this (coming to North Lincoln High School) was something meant to be for us,” Freeman said.

Freeman and his wife Lynn also have a daughter Jill who teaches at Georgia Southern.

The chance to be part of a new school was also appealing.

“Taking a building and making it into a school with a personality, it’s every administrator’s dream,” he said.

Freeman is quick to say that the job is not his alone but a combined effort with students, parents and the community.

“We’re going to have to work together as a group to set that direction,” he said.

Freeman took a circuitous route to teaching  high school age students. He began his career in the 1960s as a math instructor at Georgia Southern, a university in southeastern Georgia. After NASA budget cuts, the academic market was flooded with mathematicians.

It was then that the Screven County Schools superintendent, who had also taught Freeman in math in high school, suggested he try secondary education.

“I did it and I loved it,” he said.

Freeman said he enjoys the challenges posed by high schoolers on the brink of adulthood. Watching students mature as people means job satisfaction for him.

Freeman looks back to his own high school years as some of his most enjoyable. He says he wants to see his own students have a similar experience. Freeman knows he has reached that goal when he looks out over the group of graduates and sees them moved to tears.

 “It never failed to put a lump in my throat on graduation night,” he said. “You know you’ve done a good job.”

© 2001 Lincoln Times-News  

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