HOPE – The Hope Public Schools Board concluded its search for a new campus leader at Yerger Middle School here Monday night.

Josclyn Jones Wiley, of Texarkana, was unanimously named by the board to succeed retiring Yerger Principal Vanessa McCraw.

McCraw has served as YMS principal for three years, and was previously assistant principal on the campus for 17 years. She began her education career in 1978 in the former Oak Grove School District prior to its consolidation with the Nevada County Schools, and taught there for nine years before moving to Hope in 1986 as vocational counselor at Hope High School. She continued as a counselor for the district for nine years before moving to Yerger as assistant principal in 1997.

Wiley is currently the assistant principal for special populations at Texas High School in the Texarkana Public Schools. She holds a master’s degree in education from Texas A&M University-Texarkana in 2001, and she received her bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Central Arkansas in Conway in 1997.

Wiley holds Texas principal certification and elementary self-contained and elementary social studies certification; and, she has been an administrator in the Texarkana district since 2001, previously teaching there from 1998-2001, after beginning her career in the Pulaski County Special School District in Little Rock in 1998.

She has worked extensively in the area of special education and compliance, developing monitoring procedures for those programs, while overseeing professional development for teachers including a poverty training module for new teachers in Texarkana. Wiley has extensive experience in Therapeutic Intervention Learning Center services and the management of inclusion program implementation.

She is a member of the UCA Foundation Board; graduate of Leadership Texarkana 2008; serves on the Texarkana, Arkansas, Civil Service Commission, and is a member of the Texarkana Resources Board. Active in civic life, Wiley is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and active in Bowie and Cass counties schools with Special Olympics, as well as serving as a Deaconess, Christian education co-chair and vacation Bible school teacher at Lonoke Baptist Church.

“We are excited to have Ms. Wiley join our campus leadership at Yerger Middle School,” Superintendent Bobby Hart said.