06/25/2026
June 25, 2026
Members of the WCS Community,
I hope your summer plans are off to a great start. Here in the district, I am pleased to report that our team has been hard at work identifying and recommending candidates for administrative positions. Later this summer, my team and I will make the following recommendations to the Board of Education.
Mr. Jack Dodd will join our team as a new Special Education Supervisor. Mr. Dodd comes to us from the Macomb Intermediate School District, where he was recently the principal of Maple Lane Elementary. He will support students with disabilities across our secondary buildings and oversee our MOCI programming across the district.
Following a comprehensive interview process, Mrs. Karla Warren was selected to be the next principal of Pearl Lean Elementary School. Mrs. Warren was previously the Assistant Principal at Lean, where she showed herself to be committed to building on the strong culture and commitment to student outcomes the school is known for. Ms. Kelly Durand, who has been working as an Assistant Principal at Sterling Heights High School, will move over to join Mrs. Warren as Lean's Assistant Principal.
Following an extended process, we were unable to identify a candidate who met the criteria we established when we began our search at Green Acres Elementary. However, we do have an internal candidate with extensive experience in classroom teaching and district level leadership. Mrs. Kate Indyk, who most recently led the work to select and roll out our new TK-5 literacy materials, has agreed to step forward and serve as the Interim Principal at Green Acres while we consider next steps in our hiring process.
Ms. Durand's move to Lean, combined with the retirement of Mr. Kevin Griessel, has created two vacancies at Sterling Heights High School. To support the transition, Mr. Patrick Cwyana will move from Cousino to Sterling Heights High School. After this move, the district has two remaining administrative vacancies, an assistant principal position at Sterling Heights High School and an assistant principal position at Cousino.
Overall, we are very pleased to welcome these members of our team to new roles! We will begin a search for our remaining positions immediately and will be back in touch with an update later this summer.
Sincerely,
John C. Bernia, Jr., Ed.D.