When Lakewood School suddenly lost its principal—Shari Holbrook—to retirement, district administrators had to act quickly. They transferred Annette Grasty, the popular principal at Fairwood School, to Lakewood, and then promoted Bishop School's vice principal Eric Panosian to take over Grasty's position. This move left Bishop permanently without a vice principal.

Grasty and Panosian both say that they're doing fine in their new schools, and at this juncture, it appears that their students are adjusting as well. But some parents are still concerned that the period of changes might not be over quite yet.

Many parents at Fairwood were upset with Grasty's sudden reassignment, announced less than two weeks before her departure. They filled the multipurpose room at Fairwood on Nov. 17 to plead their case before district superintendent

Joe Rudnicki, and attended the Sunnyvale school board meeting the next night en masse to ask board members to deny the reassignment.

The board approved the personnel change, which included Panosian's assignment through the end of the school year at Fairwood. He will then be evaluated for a permanent position there. The possibility that students may undergo another change in leadership concerns parents.

"I'm okay with the change, but we didn't have a voice. They should have let us know," said Sharon Godinez, a Fairwood parent who chairs the fundraising group for Fairwood's Parent-Teacher Group. "[Panosian] came to our PTG meeting on Dec. 6, and we told him it wasn't personal. We know that he's trying his hardest. If he gets to be principal, he can get a feel for the way the school works and then input his own ideas. But he said that he doesn't know where he's going to be after the end of the year."

Panosian says that he doesn't necessarily intend to change anything at Fairwood this year, but will instead follow the same path Grasty had steered the school along until her departure. Fairwood was named a California Distinguished School earlier this year under Grasty's watch. "Things are going fine. This is not a normal procedure, but there's a pretty established routine here," Panosian said. That routine includes programs Grasty helped implement that garnered the award for the school. One of the programs is Project H.E.L.P., which incorporates summer school and intense parental involvement to help students increase their academic performance.

Parents are intent on keeping Fairwood on the level of a Distinguished School and are concerned that losing Grasty will affect the school's academic quality. But the parents are not taking out their disappointment about losing Grasty on Panosian. "Everyone's been very cordial. I never would have known that anyone was upset if I hadn't heard or read about it," Panosian said.

He added that he didn't see the need to call together a large congregation of parents when he first arrived. Instead, he chose to meet parents as they dropped off and picked up their children. He's since discovered something unique about Fairwood.

"There are a lot of parents who have been here for a long time," Panosian said. "There's very little coming-and-going. The parents and kids who are here are here to stay."

Panosian is in his 12th year of teaching. He started by teaching English in middle and high school in the Glendale Unified School District in Southern California. Before he came on board as the vice-principal at Bishop four years ago, he worked as a teacher specialist in Glendale, which involved all administrative responsibilities except for teacher evaluations.

At Bishop, he trained under longtime principal Frances Dampier, who now has to cope with Panosian's duties as well. The district will not be filling Panosian's open position at Bishop in order to save costs. "He's very hands-on, always trying to find how to solve a problem instead of just putting a Band-Aid on it. Because of that, the students he disciplined were crying the most when he left," Dampier said. "We miss him, but we wish him well."

Dampier said she was focusing instead on a $25,000 donation that Bishop just received from Yahoo!, one of their business partners, to upgrade their computer lab. Bishop has benefited from many similar grants, and according to Dampier, Panosian knows how to find them.

After their initial outcry, parents are willing to accept Panosian and curious to see what he could bring to the position. But they also want to make sure he gets the chance. "He sees how hard we're working, and I have a good feeling about it," Godinez said. "I'm hoping that they keep him there."