MANHATTAN, Mont. \u2014 The Manhattan Public School Board held a special meeting to name an interim principal for Manhattan Middle School after former principal Mary Fulp resigned last week effective\u00a0immediately.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The meeting began and ended quickly. Board chair Rob Brownell reviewed the rules and informed the crowded audience that public comment was limited to non-agenda items and could not address personnel matters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI will say to the people that came here to say something about these things,\u00a0there’s\u00a0an avenue that you can make comments, but\u00a0it’s\u00a0going to be directed to Mr.\u00a0Ayres. If you want to schedule a time with him and have any explanation of any of the things that that’s the administration’s role in this,\u201d Brownell said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Board members voted to appoint Jeff Blessum as interim principal for the rest of the school year. Superintendent Brian Ayers said Blessum had served in several administrative roles in the district.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ayers also said Blessum had previously stepped into an interim principal job at the elementary school in recent years.\u00a0That means\u00a0the current\u00a0sixth\u00a0and seventh-grade students will already know him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The leadership change followed a school field trip to Bridger Bowl. During that trip, Fulp behaved erratically and shouted about religion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Part of the incident was recorded on her Facebook Live and later spread on social media, raising concern among parents. Fulp later spoke with\u00a0NonStop\u00a0Local in an interview about what happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI said things that you\u00a0can’t\u00a0say as a leader in public education. And so, I tried to do my best, and I\u00a0did do\u00a0my best until what happened. And I love the community, the leaders.\u201d Fulp said in an interview.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Tuesday night meeting lasted a little less than ten\u00a0minutes,\u00a0and there was minimal discussion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ayers said the search for a permanent principal for the next school year is already underway.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MANHATTAN, Mont. \u2014 The Manhattan Public School Board held a special meeting to name an interim principal for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[71211,9513,34035,71212,34036,34037,267,75,84,83,71215,26814,71210,71213,9,24,71214,71209,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-181745","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-abc-fox-montana","9":"tag-bozeman","10":"tag-bozeman-news","11":"tag-fox-montana","12":"tag-gallatin-valley","13":"tag-kwyb","14":"tag-local-news","15":"tag-manhattan","16":"tag-manhattan-headlines","17":"tag-manhattan-news","18":"tag-montana-local-news","19":"tag-montana-news","20":"tag-montanarightnow","21":"tag-mt-news","22":"tag-new-york","23":"tag-new-york-city","24":"tag-news-montana","25":"tag-nonstop-local","26":"tag-nyc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}