Incoming principals named for CBE, MBHS

During the board of education meeting on May 21, members approved personnel recommendations that included the appointment of two new principals within the school system: Sandy Ritchey, who will be principal of Cherokee Bend Elementary, and Philip Holley who will take over at Mountain Brook High School.

Both were previously assistant principals at their respective schools, and will start their new positions this summer as MBHS principal Amanda Hood and CBE principal Betsy Bell are set to transition and retire, respectively, the first of July.

Ritchey came from Hoover City Schools to Crestline Elementary in 2013 where she was a reading coach for four years. She was later promoted to assistant principal at CBE.

A graduate of UAB, Ritchey has bachelor's and master's degrees in elementary education, an administrative certificate and an educational specialist degree. She is currently a doctoral candidate in educational leadership, also at UAB.

Ritchey has also served as the president of the Birmingham Area Reading Council and is a member of the Alabama Reading Association and the International Literacy Association. In 2017, she was named an alternate Elementary Alabama State Teacher of the Year and won the first Jerome Lewis Legacy Award at CES, and in 2016 she was named the District VII Alabama Teacher of the Year and the Mountain Brook Teacher of the Year.

Holley first joined MBS as a science teacher and assistant coach at the junior high. He worked at MBJH for 11 years before serving as assistant principal at two schools outside the Mountain Brook district and later returned to Mountain Brook as the assistant principal of MBHS in 2016. 

Holley attended Auburn University for his bachelor's degree in secondary education and later earned his Master of Arts in secondary education and Master of Arts in education with an emphasis in educational leadership from UAB. He was awarded MBS' Margaret Spencer Ragland Award for excellence in teaching in 2011, was named the Alabama Teacher of the Year in 2010, and received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching in 2005.