Wake principal's honor well-earned

He cares. Yes, he does. He cares when he walks the hallways at Brentwood Elementary School in Raleigh, greeting students, noticing as people with fine eyes do, those students in this relatively low-income school who might be having worries, who might need clothes or extra help. He talks to them, to teachers.

Eric Fitts, a South Carolina native, comes from a family of educators, and they’re pretty proud right now because the Brentwood principal is the Wake County principal of the year. He wants Brentwood to be a top magnet school, even though its test scores are not what he’d like them to be. But they’ve risen dramatically in the last two years, despite there being a large number of disadvantaged students.

So Fitts fights on. “He wants to make it work for everybody,” says his PTA president. “He’s a great leader that way.” That president, Lia McNeilly, says with a measure of personal pride that thanks to Fitts, “You see a well-run school where kids are supported. It’s a warm, friendly school. Not all schools are like that.”

For Fitts’ part, his reaction to the honor he received last week gave credit to students and teachers. He’s proud, though: “We’re in a position now to try to springboard Brentwood into being a destination place for children. It’s a place to come to, not to go away from.”

It has a mighty fine principal, too.

This story was originally published October 11, 2015 at 2:40 PM with the headline "Wake principal's honor well-earned."