The Fayette County Board of

Education Monday night appointed Tracie Fleming to be the new principal

at McIntosh High School, a position she will assume next week.

Fleming replaces Greg Stillions,

named in November to be the first principal at Whitewater High School,

which is slated to open this fall.

Superintendent John DeCotis

recommended Fleming to the board, and the vote to confirm her appointment

was unanimous. "I believe Mrs. Fleming to be the best overall candidate

for the job," said DeCotis.

Fleming has spent more than

25 years as an educator in Georgia and is in her 18th year with the Fayette

County School System. Her most recent position is as assistant principal

at Starr's Mill High School, where she has been since the fall of 1998,

the school's second year in existence.

"I'm just looking forward

to working with the people at McIntosh, and seeing if I can make a difference

with students, teachers, and parents," said Fleming.

Noting that the student and

parent populations at McIntosh and Starr's Mill are similar (Starr's Mill

was begun with mostly McIntosh students six years ago), she is looking

forward to a smooth transition. Also, given her years of experience in

the county school system, she will be working at McIntosh with some people

she has worked with before at other schools.

There remains some work she

must wrap up this week at Starr's Mill before her move. "I guess

I'll be burning the midnight oil for a little while," she said.

It is not known at this time

whether the school board, facing an ever-tightening budget, will replace

Fleming at Starr's Mill as soon as possible or wait until summer.

Stillions' new position at

Whitewater officially took effect Jan. 1, and he has been serving as the

head of both schools until his replacement at McIntosh could be found,

according to school system spokesperson Melinda Berry-Dreisbach.

Although construction of the

Whitewater High facility will not be finished until the 2004-2005 academic

year, the new school is slated to open at the beginning of the 2003-2004

scholastic year at the LaFayette Educational Center. The decision to open

the school one year early was approved in August by the Board of Education

in order to relieve overcrowding at Fayette County High and to allow rising

ninth-graders bound for the new school the option of starting their high

school years at Whitewater.

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