Brownwood High School Principal Bill Faircloth plans to retire May 30th after 10 years at the school. The Brownwood ISD board of trustees will take up the issue of his replacement at the school board meeting next week in executive session.
He stated that one of the three assistant principals will become the new BHS principal. The announcement of the promotion will be given at the school board meeting. Faircloth stated that his assistant principals David McCullough, Mitch Moore and Andy Gill have been an excellent staff.
“One of the three is going to be the new principal. Any of them will do a good job at it,” said Faircloth. “They have made my job here really easy. Any of the three would be fantastic.”
After growing up in Abilene and graduating from Cooper High School, Faircloth came to Brownwood to attend Howard Payne University and hasn’t left the area since. He stated that he graduated from HPU, and began teaching and coaching at Northwest Elementary in Brownwood. Next he had a career with the phone company for about 20 years before retiring when he didn’t want to relocate to Las Colinas. Faircloth also served on the BISD board of trustees for 9 years, spending a few of those years as their Board President.He then taught math at Texas Youth Commission for five years before becoming a principal at Richland Springs for two years. He then came to Brownwood High School. He received his Masters of Education Administration from Tarleton State University.
According to Faircloth, it’s been a good 10 years, but that “you reach a point when you just know it’s time.”
He stated that the past 10 years have seen much success and many accolades, but that they were not his works.
He outlined the following:
2004 – School Improvement Bond Election was passed.
2005 – BISD began a complete renovation of Brownwood High School, tearing down most walls within the building.
2009 – Renovation of BHS was completed. That same year, BHS was one of 26 nationally recognized Blue Ribbon schools in the nation, an honor that a school can only receive once every 10 years. 2015 marks the next year BHS will be considered for the recognition according to Faircloth.
Seven out of ten years the school received accolades from the State of Texas. 5 out of these 7 years, BHS received a “Recognized,” status and met standards with 3 out of 4 distinctions.
Brownwood High School has had a 94% graduation rate over the past 10 years
BHS received 6 Gold Performance awards for different academic areas.
“It’s been a blessing for me that the people of Brownwood have let me work with their children,” Faircloth said. “I have been surrounded with all these accolades, which is a lot that had very little to if anything to do with Bill Faircloth. It had to do with some wonderful teachers and some wonderful kids. There have been people like Dr. Sue Jones, Gina Moss, Kevin Gabaree, and Lisa Land, those people gave me a lot of opportunity and were great mentors. Because when you come from Richland Springs to Brownwood, trust me there is a lot of difference.”
One of the more important people in addition to the three assistant principals that have been instrumental to Mr. Faircloth is the high school secretary, Teresa Williams.
After retiring, Faircloth plans to continue working a job he has had on the side for about 17 years and to spend more time with family, especially his grandchildren. He said the thing he will miss most about BHS is the kids. He will still be involved in the lives of local kids through his church as he and his wife Suzanne have taught 7th grade Sunday school at Coggin Avenue Baptist Church for the past 40 years. She teaches the girls and Mr. Faircloth teaches the boys.
“When you get used to being around kids, it’s pretty rewarding because they are pretty neat kids. It’s really neat to watch them grow and mature, when they act one way when they are a freshman and then when they come in three or four years later as a senior. It’s like talking to a grown man and you realize, ‘boy he has come a long way,’ and it’s really nice to hope that you had just a little part in that.”
Photo contributed.
