PAT NELSON Port Aransas’ H.G. Olsen Elementary School has a new principal.

She is Pat Nelson, formerly principal at Aransas County ISD’s Live Oak Learning Center in Rockport-Fulton. School board members unanimously voted to offer Nelson a one-year probationary contract at a special meeting at noon on Monday, July 12.

Nelson will start as soon as she and her husband, an assistant principal at Rockport Fulton High School, get back from vacation and she hands in her resignation. That’s expected to be Monday, Aug. 2.

“I’m excited to have Pat Nelson aboard as principal at H.G. Olsen,” said Port Aransas ISD Superintendent Dr. Sharon Doughty, who recommended Nelson to the board. “I believe she’ll make a super principal and be great to work with.”

Nelson has been principal at Live Oak Learning Center, which includes first through third grades, since 2002. Before that she was principal of Little Bay Elementary and Rockport-Fulton Intermediate. She was also an assistant principal at Rockport-Fulton Junior High School and a teacher at Live Oak Elementary.

She received her bachelor’s degree as a teacher of hearing impaired and in elementary education from Texas Tech University in 1975. She has a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction with an early childhood endorsement from Corpus Christi State University (1990) and one in mid-management from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (1995).

Nelson listed her educational philosophy as, “Every student has the ability to learn to the maximum of their intellectual and emotional potential if taught by teachers who use strong research based teaching strategies and have been well-trained and mentored in those strategies.”

It took school trustees less than onethird the time to discuss Nelson’s employment and vote to hire her than it did for them to decide not to decide on a new vestibule for Port Aransas High School’s gymnasium.

At its regular meeting on Wednesday, July 7, the board sent back a design for the vestibule that would have cost $35,000, saying that was too much money. On Monday, Doughty handed them a design that would have slightly expanded the concrete slab while being closed on two sides at a cost of $25,000.

The board discussed for 45 minutes whether the cost was too much, whether the vestibule needs to be enclosed and what it would take to control rain and sand from entering the gym through the vestibule.

Then, they decided to table any action on approving the design, and asked Doughty to get bids on the design before them in an attempt to get the cost lower than $25,000.

Also at its July 7 meeting, the board held a budget workshop for the upcoming school year’s budget, and approved hiring a teacher to replace high school math teacher Mike Jones.

Jones resigned to accept a position with the Corpus Christi ISD.

He’ll be replaced by Colleen Cummings, who comes from the Flour Bluff ISD, where she taught at Flour Bluff Intermediate School. She’ll teach math at Port Aransas High School.