As the student body of Etowah says goodbye to our beloved principal, it is nice to know that the man who has done everything he can to improve the student morale and campus environment, also struggled on his first day at Etowah.

While getting lost on his way to the C, or cafeteria building during his first day, KB was faced to conquer the task of a “wild goose chase,” he calls it, for missing files of the entire freshmen class, since there was not an appropriate protocol for dealing with misplaced files.

The files ended up at the county office being shredded.  After stopping the shredding, KB had already lost more than 300 of the freshmen class cumulative files for the year, the cumulative file that contains all of student’s test scores since elementary school, and also the folder which is given back during a senior’s graduation practice.

“To add insult to injury, the pedestrian walkway connecting the 3000 and 6000 building was literally falling apart when I got here, and a brick came down and hit right on my head, and at the time I wish it would have just knocked me out,” KB recalled within the first hours of his new job.

It did not end there; during his drive home that night he received a phone call from Etowah’s athletic director informing him about a MRSA outbreak in the fieldhouse, dangerous enough it ended up putting two Etowah students into the hospital.

“I said to myself, this is literally the biggest nightmare of my life, so I drive down to the field house which I remind you, it is still the first day, and I have never been there yet…If I could have taken a grenade and blown it up, that is what I would have down,” KB said.

Although he experienced a merciless first 24 hours on the job, it did not stop him from pushing Etowah past the limits he knew it could go. By adding more than 20 new AP classes and an east campus for students to learn with the best facilities possible, he claims his best advice to the next principal is to purely listen.

“I do not want a legacy to be trapped in time,” KB said, tearing up after being reminded about the emotional farewell ceremony at the spring pep rally.

For the first time in his life, he has set up a personal email account just for himself, and since his new commute will be by train, he will have time to reflect and finally read the books he has always wanted to.