Punahou promotes 2 new principals

Punahou School has promoted Emily McCarren and Paris Priore-Kim to serve as its high school and junior school principals, respectively.

McCarren will take over as Academy principal, effective in July, replacing Kevin Conway, who announced last summer that he would retire after this school year.

Priore-Kim also will start in July as principal of the Junior School (kindergarten to eighth grade), and replace Mike Walker, who will be taking a job as head of school at San Francisco Day School.

Punahou is one of Hawaii’s largest private schools, with approximately 3,750 students.

McCarren is director of Punahou’s Wo International Center, which offers intensive language instruction, study-abroad and summer programs for foreign students, lectures and seminars, and teacher training.

Before being appointed to lead the center in 2012, McCarren spent six years teaching at Punahou.

She holds a master’s degree in Spanish literature from the Saint Louis University Madrid campus and a master’s in educational leadership from the Teachers College Klingenstein Center at Columbia University. She is completing a doctorate in educational technology at the University of Hawaii.

"The Academy principal position thrills me," McCarren said in a campus announcement. "It is a role laden with complexity, challenge and opportunity. It has the capacity to impact and support so many teachers and students over time while continuing to evolve the school."

Priore-Kim, a Punahou alumna, joined the Punahou faculty in 1998 as a middle-school social studies teacher. She has spent the past eight years leading the classes of 2011 and 2015 as a class dean.

She holds a master’s degree in private school leadership and a doctorate in professional educational practice from UH-Manoa.

The school said both hires were made with the assistance of Carney, Sandoe & Associates, an independent school search firm.

"Over the coming years, I look forward to reaffirming and creating the ideal of a K-12 school with a vibrant and compelling educational vision alongside both new principals," Punahou President Jim Scott said in the announcement.