Four Fayette County schools will begin the new school year next week with new principals.

Erinn Angelo will become principal at Braelinn Elementary following Jennifer Couch’s resignation. Angelo, a 24-year veteran of Fayette schools, had been the principal at Sara Harp Minter Elementary since 2012; she will be replaced at Minter by John Gibbas, who recently moved to Georgia after serving as an administrator and elementary school principal in Illinois.

Rising Starr Middle’s new principal is Kathy Smith, a former assistant principal at Sandy Creek High and Bennett’s Mill Middle who will take over for Nancy Blair, who retired at the end of the last school year.

Richard Smith, another former Sandy Creek assistant principal, has been named as that high school’s interim principal for the coming year.

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Fulton DA Fani Willis (center) with Nathan J. Wade (right), the special prosecutor she hired to manage the Trump case and had a romantic relationship with, at a news conference announcing charges against President-elect Donald Trump and others in Atlanta, Aug. 14, 2023. Georgia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025, upheld an appeals court's decision to disqualify Willis from the election interference case against Trump and his allies. (Kenny Holston/New York Times)

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