Bain returns to roots at SPHS

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Dan Bain is quite familiar with how things are ran at South Putnam Jr./Sr. High School. He grew up in the area, graduated from the school, and has sent his children through the school corporation. So when an opening for assistant principal came up, Bain took a shot.

For 17 years, Bain has been working for Cloverdale School Corp. He has done everything from teaching industrial tech and health and physical education at Cloverdale Middle School to coaching varsity basketball and being assistant principal at Cloverdale High School. He was also the school corporation's safety administrator.

According to Bain, he has about six years of experience as an assistant principal. He held the position for four years back-to-back and two years prior he had been asked to fill in. He liked the position so much, that he decided to get his principal's license.

When an opening for a teaching position at Cloverdale Middle School became available, Bain decided to step down from assistant principal to teach again for personal reasons.

At South Putnam, Bain will take over duties as assistant principal and safety administrator for the school corporation. He is looking forward to working with Kieth Puckett and the school. "It's a challenging job and I love a challenge," he said.

Puckett said that Bain is dynamic, energetic, and positive, full of high energy. "He is really well thought of not only in the community but amongst the schools in West Central Indiana," he said.

"His disciplinary ladder has been copied by several schools."

According to Bain, he created the ladder while at Cloverdale where it seemed to work well. The ladder gives teachers the choice of removing a student who has misbehaved from the classroom and instead of sending them down to the office to wait for an administrator to talk to them, they are sent straight to the In-School Suspension room. The ladder also does away with after school detention and Saturday school.

Bain said the ladder is pretty simple to understand, especially for students. He hopes that teachers will respond well to it and give it a chance.

He told the BannerGraphic Monday night that even though it worked at Cloverdale, it does not mean that it will work at South Putnam. "We will have to work the bugs out," he said after the ladder has been added to the handbook and tested.

The disciplinary ladder will also encompass tardies and the attendance policies that are all ready in place.

Bain is not anticipating too many disciplinary problems and he hopes that the number will decrease the longer the ladder is in effect.

The plan is to get the students in tune to how the ladder will work and then at the end of the year, tweaking the system to adjust it to fit the school.

Faculty and students will be seeing more of Bain during the school year. He said that he is very teacher- and student-oriented and likes to know what is going on with the students.

"We think the world of him," said Puckett.

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