All schools in the district will have new principals. Principals’ assignment weren’t announced until few weeks before classes begin. This was made earlier than the past few years in order to give time for principals to make some plans especially they were expected to have new assignments. Superintendent Art Stellar said it’s been a general rule of thumb in Burke County to move principals to new schools in order to sharpen principals and also put a consideration to their career path. Stellar believe that there is no perfect principal for a school despite the surprised faces of parent’s loosing a popular principal. There are lots of options to choose from if they consider selecting principals outside but the school district suggest that they place principals inside the county and some of the principals will be assigned as assistant principals of merging schools. The N.C. Department of instruction will allocate finances for the assistant principals according to the number of student enrollment. This effort was made in order to line up the number of assistant principals with the state budget and to reduce school expenses. Also to end the practice of paying extra expenses using the local fund.

The county decided to merge six schools into three and each high school will have two assistant principals by 2010-11 and four middle schools will share two principals at once. The list of merging schools are; Mountain View and Hillcrest elementary into all new Mountain Crest Elementary School in Morganton, Drexel Primary’s K-2 program with Hallyburton Elementary third through fifth grades into Drexel Elementary School, two alternative high schools in Hildebran and Morganton into Hallyburton Academy. With the exchange of principals like; Lisa Lane Dale from Hillcrests succeeds Jill King in Mull Elementary School, Jill King succeeds Kathy Amos of Oak Hill Elementary, and Becky Roach from Rutherford College elementary will succeed Shance Mace of Ray Childers Elementary, and Ross Rumbaugh from Hallyburton succeeds Becky Roach. While all current middle school principals will remain in position.