This will be the last academic school year for Leslie Shepard, who has worked at Baltimore’s acclaimed School for the Arts since it opened 32 years ago and has served as it’s director since 2001, WBALTV.com reported on Wednesday. “The School for the Arts was my life,” Shepard said. “It’s time for Act Two. What that will be, where, how, I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out,” said Shepard  according to WBAL. The School for the Arts plans to find a replacement by the end of this year.

The news of Shepard’s departure comes at a time when the comings and goings of Baltimore principals is occurring with record-breaking frequency.  In August, the Sun reported that “more than 100 [principals] have been reassigned or have left the school system in the past three years,” all since Andres Alonso began serving as Baltimore City Public Schools CEO in 2007.

Why are so many principals leaving on Alonso’s watch? “I am impatient about performance, and we should not accept mediocrity, ever,” Alsonso told the Sun. Some educators disagree with Alonso’s methods. “Previous CEOS have expected the same type of results that Alsonso wants, but they went about getting them in a different way,” administrators union President Jimmy Gittings told the Sun. “