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A high school that is slated to close just lost its second principal in a year, and community members are agitating to play a stronger role in selecting their next leader.

Katherine Kefalas, the embattled interim acting principal of Brooklyn’s Paul Robeson High School, was removed yesterday, Department of Education officials confirmed, and a new interim principal, Ronald Wells, was named.

Students and teachers say Kefalas, who had shepherded South Shore High School in the final months before it closed, was never a good fit for Robeson and wasn’t giving the school what it needed to improve.

“We needed someone strong, passionate, and committed, who believed in our community and our students and had experience to stand on,” said Stefanie Siegel, a longtime Robeson teacher. “She had none of this and to make it worse she was afraid, defensive, and didn’t listen or respect the knowledge, history, and experience here. … She was not the right person for Robeson and that was obvious from the minute she stepped in the building.”

But they are also saying that want more control over who their next principal will be. “We don’t want an inexperienced principal to take over a school in crisis,” 10 members of the school’s student government wrote in a statement. (more…)