Columbine High School Principal Frank DeAngelis Announces Retirement
LITTLETON, Colo. (CBS4) - Columbine High School Principal Frank DeAngelis has announced that he is retiring at the end of the 2013-14 school year.
DeAngelis has been the principal at Columbine for 18 years and saw the school through the tragedy that occurred on April 20, 1999. Two heavily armed Columbine students walked into their school and opened fire. They killed 12 students and one teacher before killing themselves.
DeAngelis has scheduled a news conference Wednesday morning at Columbine High School to announce his retirement.
DeAngelis Letter To Columbine Parents
This is a special year at Columbine High School as we celebrate the 40 Year Anniversary. The Columbine School Community is truly special and I have been blessed to have spent the past 34 years at CHS. I want to take this opportunity to inform you that I have decided to retire after this school year. It has been my privilege to lead this wonderful school through the best and worst of times.
The support of our families and the Columbine community has meant the world to me; I have been profoundly honored and humbled to be a part of the Columbine family. I can never thank you enough for the continued support that you have given me over the past four decades as a teacher, coach, assistant principal and the past 18 years as principal.
It has given me great pleasure to see many of my former students' children attending and graduating from Columbine High School. I felt it might be time to retire before a student informs me that I taught their grandparents. Thank you for 18 memorable years as principal of this extraordinary school. I know that I will shed a lot of tears, tears of joy and tears of sadness; and I know that the memories of my time at Columbine will last for a lifetime. I am eternally grateful. Wherever my next journey in life takes me, my heart will always be with Columbine.
"You're A Columbine Rebel for Life and No One Can Ever Take That Away From You"
We Are Columbine!
Sincerely,
Frank DeAngelis
Principal
