Gwen Gideon, the assistant principal who oversees the International Baccalaureate program, has been named Acting Principal of Gulf High School. Ms. Gideon joined the Gulf administration in 2009. She had been an assistant principal at Marchman Technical Education Center. Before coming to Pasco County, she had been a principal, assistant principal, and teacher at various schools. She informed the faculty at a meeting on Tuesday that she plans to move to Nebraska after the school year is over to be near family members, including a son and grandchild.
For those interested in the history of Gulf High School, we offer these interesting facts.
1. When Ms. Gideon became an assistant principal here, she was the first African-American assistant principal in Gulf High School history.
2. We believe that Ms. Gideon is only our second Acting Principal. The first was Prof. Deane DeFord, who was named acting principal at the start of the 1931-32 school year when a dispute arose over who should be the Gulf principal. The dispute was decided by the Florida Supreme Court. DeFord was a teacher and Gulf’s first ever football coach, not counting a volunteer coach who served briefly before him.
3. This is really unrelated, but Mr. Miller recently found on a genealogy web site a better picture than we had of Gulf’s first (1922-23) principal. The principal’s name was Theophilus Jones McBeath and the picture is here.
