Hopewell City Public Schools will welcome two new assistant principals to the division for the 2017-2018 school year, with Ryan Sykes joining the team at Carter G. Woodson Middle and Schneria Valentine joining the team at Patrick Copeland Elementary.
Sykes is no stranger to Carter Woodson: from February 2012 to 2016, he held positions at the school including sixth-grade inclusion special education math teacher, eighth-grade inclusion math teacher and 504 coordinator. Outside the classroom, he served as an assistant track and field coach for Hopewell High.
Since August 2016, he has served as administrative dean at Elkhardt-Thompson Middle School in Richmond. Prior to coming to Hopewell, he worked at Indian River Middle School in Chesapeake. He received both his bachelor’s and his master’s degree from Virginia State University.
Valentine brings many years of teaching and administrative experience to her new role at Patrick Copeland. After classroom stints at Totaro Elementary School in Lawrenceville, during which she helped students achieve an 83 percent pass rate on the Standards of Learning assessment in reading, she moved to Greensville Elementary School in Emporia. There, she was nominated for Teacher of the Year in 2015-16 and served on the positive behavior intervention and support team.
Since August 2016, she has served as assistant principal at Elizabeth Scott Elementary School in Chester. She received her bachelor’s from Longwood University and her master’s from Liberty University.
Hopewell Schools welcomes both educators to the school division, where they will officially take over their new roles on July 10.