There’s a new guy in the principal’s chair at Auburn Riverside High School.

Well, the seat might be new to Dave Halford, but the school is most definitely not. He’s been at ARHS since it opened in 1995, teaching for two years, serving as dean of students for four and as an assistant principal for nine.

Halford, 39, succeeds longtime principal Bruce Phillips, who has retired.

“I’ve been kind of on the ground floor here, and I really respected Bruce and everything he’s done,” Halford said. “It’s amazing that we have been so stable. A lot of schools will go through a lot of changes in leadership, so there is not that stability. I am hoping to be able to continue that stability and to help us grow and get better. Even though something or somebody is good, there is always room for improvement.”

Being an educator is a far cry from what Halford dreamed of doing with his life when he was a kid — flying commercial airplanes. After graduating from Auburn High School in 1989, he worked on his aviation degree at Green River Community College. From there, he went on to earn his professional pilot’s license at the Auburn Municipal Airport.

The problem was that he didn’t have enough money at that time to reach his goal of becoming a commercial pilot, so he decided to teach and work toward his aviation degree during the summers.

Halford earned degrees in history and math from Central Washington University, then worked as a substitute teacher for the Federal Way School District. The Auburn School District snatched him up the next year to teach history and math, which he did for one year at Cascade Junior High. He also coached seventh grade basetball there.

Somewhere along the way, Halford’s dreams and his attitude toward this temporary teaching thing began to change. The big change was that he discovered that he liked working with kids, especially with struggling students, a whole lot.

“When I first started student teaching, I found I was drawn to that type of student. I wanted to help them out and get them on their way. I also loved the coaching piece of it,” he said. “I was working in after-school traffic safety at AHS at that time and was an assistant swimming coach at Auburn High School with Jim Ferrell. When ARHS opened up, I had the opportunity to apply, and I did.”

Halford talked about the goals he has set for this year. First, he’ll train his sites on ninth grade because that’s when a lot of students drop out.

“We want to be able to look at those statistics from last year and improve on those. We want to help them with what’s called an on-time graduation. We want to be able to track these guys and find out where they are, what’s happening, where they start to lose credits, what classes are they losing credits in and help them,” Halford said.

Halford praised some of the successful programs at ARHS, including the Recapture Program, the Orientation and the Freshman Academy, which singles out 60 at-risk students and works with them.

“Those are some of the pieces that are doing some great things and that have us right up there at the top of the district in what we’re doing with ninth-grade students. But there’s always that improvement I talked about. My focus is going be to look at the kids from last year, where were they behind, and what can we do with these kids this year to be able to not fall behind from looking at what last year’s group had.

Halford is jazzed for the year ahead.

“We live just up the hill, so I know a lot of families in the area,” Halford said. “It’s a great community, a great student body, and that makes it very exciting to be able to come in here … There are a lot of pieces, so I think this is going to be a year with a lot of tasks and projects for me and the teaching staff.”

Dave and Sandy Halford have two children, James, 11, and Emma, 7.

“I have a lot of outside interests, but one of my biggest problems is probably finding a balance with my home life and work,” he said. “If you were to ask my wife that, she’d probably say that was one of my number one things. We’ve been married for 14 years. So to spend time with those guys is one of my favorite things to do. But right now I am also involved with Seattle University. I’m up there working toward my doctorate and my superintendent credentials. So, that’s what I’m doing with my weekends right now.”