Britta Booth, who has served four years as Camp Verde Elementary School Principal and a total of 14 years with the school district, recently announced her retirement from the position at the end of this year.
Camp Verde Unified School District Administrator-In-Charge Danny Howe led a committee to find Booth’s replacement, and at a meeting on May 14, the CVUSD governing board unanimously approved Jaclyn Campbell-Farrer to take over Booth’s position as the new CVES principal.
Campbell-Farrer comes to Camp Verde from Flagstaff, where she spent the past year working for the Arizona Department of Education as an Education Program Specialist for the Northern Arizona region, with the role of helping out struggling school districts to improve. Before that, Campbell-Farrer worked as principal at the Chaparral Elementary School and as assistant principal at the Maryland School, both in Phoenix.
But for all her time away, Campbell-Farrer is also returning to where she got her start in education. She taught 5th and 6th grade at CVES before moving out of town and up to administration in 2010. Campbell-Farrer said that she had planned to stay longer working for ADE, but when she saw that the school she had began her career at was hiring a principal, she could not pass up the chance to come back.
“It’s a very caring, tight-knit campus and community that was very good to me while I lived there,” Campbell-Farrer said. “I very much think that hasn’t changed, so I’m excited to come back to a school that shaped me into the educator and I believe started shaping me into the leader that I am today. I just remember Camp Verde Elementary as a place with so much heart, and that’s how I’ve chosen to lead the schools that I’ve led and serve in the capacities that I’ve served since I’ve been gone.”
Howe pointed to Campbell-Farrer’s previous experience with the school as a point in her favor, allowing her to come in and replace Booth, who had been with the district for years before becoming principal.
“She knows Camp Verde,” Howe said “Obviously not like someone who’s been here 13 years straight, but she knows Camp Verde because she has worked here. She worked here when she did her student teaching and when she got a teaching job here. Working with us in the school improvement process, she knows, so she’s not totally green.”
Howe also sees Campbell-Farrer’s experience working for the state as a valuable asset in her new position.
“It’s a new opportunity for growth,” Howe said. “Her school improvement experience — she worked with other schools. She was working with a lot of districts. So she knows how to look at data, analyze data, know what things to adjust and hopefully help the Camp Verde Unified School District to move forward. That’s one of the things that I’m really excited about, personally.”
Campbell-Farrer hopes to come visit the school some time in the next week, but will get her chance to meet the fuller Camp Verde community at Meet The Teachers Night on Aug.1, just before school starts. Campbell-Farrer said she hopes to work to involve parents and the Camp Verde community more directly with the school.
“In addition to building relationships with teachers/staff and re-acclimating myself with the campus this summer, I would like to establish a PTO [Parent Teacher Organization] at CVES early in the school year,” Campbell-Farrer wrote in an email. “I know Camp Verde has fantastic parents and involved community members so establishing a PTO is a great way to involve parents at the school for many purposes including fundraising, planning school activities, supporting teachers and classrooms, volunteer programs and more. I would love to talk to interested parents this summer or at the start of school to get this committee started.”
