Two Orange County schools are welcoming new principals.

Last week, the Orange County Board of Education approved two new hires, and both of them come from within the school system.

Orange County Schools’ Chief Communications Officer Seth Stephens said that a wide net was cast for job candidates, as always, but Leslie Armistad and Angela Coachman were best suited for their new challenges.

Armistad is the new principal at Grady A. Brown Elementary School in Hillsborough. She’ll leave her current position as assistant principal at New Hope Elementary School in Chapel Hill.

“Leslie is a familiar face to a lot of people in the district, and many people in the community,” said Stephens. “She was a teacher at C.W. Stanford for a good number of years, and a coach there.”

Stephens said she’s a perfect fit for the school, which has built a “positive culture” for learning.

Prior to working at New Hope Elementary, Armistad was assistant principal at Woodlawn Middle School in the Alamance-Burlington School System.

The new principal at Hillsborough Elementary School is Angela Coachman, currently the assistant principal at Glenwood Elementary in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.

“She’ll be heading up our year-round elementary school,” said Stephens. “It’s the only year-round school we have in Orange County, So it takes a special person to be the principal of a school like that, and she is a special person. She has a personality that’s well-built for that environment.”

Coachman has experience as a middle school reading teacher, and as the coordinator of exceptional children for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.

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