Acting principal brings wealth of experience

MARBLEHEAD – The new interim principal at the Marblehead Village School has some specialized experience that will help the school this year.Lisa Bryant, appointed by Superintendent of Schools Paul Dulac, is a former principal of a Grades 5-8 middle school in Lowell, where she spent the bulk of her career. During her tenure at the middle school, the city “tore down and built a whole new extension to the building,” according to Dulac.That project is comparable to the boiler replacement and renovations that Bryant will be dealing with at the Village School in January, and that experience convinced Dulac to hire her for this year.Bryant is semi-retired n “I like to work, I never completely retired,” is the way she describes it n and by the time her contract expires on June 30 Dulac expects to have hired a permanent principal. She will earn $81,000 this year, an annual salary of $97,000 pro-rated because she started two months after the school year began.She has recently served as an examiner at the Massachusetts Office of Educational Quality and Accountability, a teacher at an American school in Chile in the 1960s, a bilingual teacher and school psychologist and middle and elementary school principal in her native Lowell in the 1970s and 1980s and a middle-school principal in Watertown in the 1990s.An assistant director at the Office of Educational Quality and Accountability mentioned her to Dulac.She met the School Committee last week and told them, “I feel very excited.” She praised the high level of educational discourse she has seen in town, as well as the professionalism of the teachers and the wide range of services provided to students.Bryant has already taken steps to control the morning and afternoon traffic at the Grades 4-6 Village School.