Nathan Lamar appointed Interim principal for Winthrop Middle School

Nathan Lamar will serve as the interim middle school principal for the next year.

Superintendent of Schools Lisa Howard announced the appointment at Monday night’s school committee meeting. 

Current middle school principal Brian Curley is taking over as an interim assistant superintendent in the district on July 1.

“We put that posting out internally to see if we had an internal candidate and one person was interested, that was Nate Lamar,” said Howard. “Nate is the chairperson of the special education evaluation team, which is an administrative position at the middle school. He has past experience as a principal in a charter school and as an assistant principal in Boston Public Schools.”

Howard said Lamar is a team player who puts in extra hours into his work.

“His knowledge base in terms of the whole child is very strong, looking not only at special ed kids, but understanding the needs of all kids,” said Howard. “He does have experience working with (Curley) in that realm, but also he can carry forward the work that Brian is doing.”

Lamar hopes that the position ends up being longterm, but understands that at the present time it is an interim position, Howard said.

“That creates another hole, because I have to fill the chairperson as an interim,” the superintendent said. “We do have some candidates from within.”

Filling the interim positions helps the district to grow from within and reward people and the work they are doing in the classroom if they want to step up.

“An interim position, it is a good chance to try out that administrative role; and fortunately, we will still have Brian here to coach a new person, and we will still have Nate here to coach a new person,” said Howard. “There is really no better plan than that if you had to orchestrate it yourself, you want to have a person that left that position still be there because they can bring you up to speed on a lot of things that you need.”