YOUR AD HERE »

Carbondale high school hires principal

John Colson
Post Independent
Aspen, CO Colorado

CARBONDALE – There will be a new boss at Roaring Fork High School this fall when new Principal Drew Adams takes over for outgoing Principal Cliff Colia.

Adams said the similarities between RFHS and other schools he has worked in were central to his reasoning in switching jobs.

“I think that’s a large part of why I wanted to work in Re-1,” he told the Post Independent on Thursday, citing the district’s smaller enrollments, the mixed ethnicity of the student populations and the proximity to outdoor recreation.



Colia announced recently that he is stepping down after four years as the RFHS principal and 23 years total in the Re-1 school district.

After a relatively short search, the Roaring Fork School District board voted to hire Adams at the board’s regular meeting Wednesday.




Adams, who is still at his desk as the assistant principal at Casey Middle School in Boulder, will start his new job July 31.

He and his family – a wife and two young daughters – are looking for a home in Carbondale, he told the Post Independent in a telephone interview Thursday.

Adams, 40, has been teaching at Casey Middle School for four years and has 17 years in education, he said.

His prior jobs have been as assistant principal at a high school and 11 years as a teacher at different grade levels.

He graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and Latin American studies, and in 2003, he received a master’s in curriculum and instruction, with a focus on “linguistically diverse populations,” from the University of Colorado at Denver.

Adams speaks Spanish “pretty fluently,” he said, largely thanks to living in Puerto Rico for three years as a boy.

He said he taught school in Mexico twice, once in a private school and once in a public school, and has traveled extensively in Mexico and Latin America.

Casey Middle School, Adams said, is similar to RFHS in the makeup of its student body, split among Latino and Anglo populations.

The same was true of two other schools where he taught over the years, he added.

“There are a lot of similarities, I think, as far as the demographics are concerned,” Adams said.

In general, Adams said, “I’m very student-focused. I seek out all available resources to ensure that students are successful,” including resources outside the school.

jcolson@postindependent.com