A little more than two months on the job, West Seattle High's new principal Bruce Bivins has had his hands full with staff and student needs, a budget deadline and issues surrounding the school's block schedule system.

But his biggest charge as principal is to ensure everyone works together on a common direction and vision for the school and the students, Bivins said.

"The bottom line is that students and students' work has to be at the center of every conversation," he said. "It's not a time for status quo, we need to keep turning as environmental needs and influences change but with an end in mind that's common."

Bivins, 38, brings with him a history of bridging the gap between community and school resources.

Prior to coming to West Seattle he spent five years as assistant principal at Franklin High School. There he helped develop small-learning communities and was instrumental in building community mentoring programs for struggling students.

Before that Bivins was a special education instructor in the Edmonds School District and at Garfield High School. He also worked for three years as the King County Juvenile Detention School Coordinator for the district's Interagency Schools while earning his masters in educational administration and principal accreditation from Western Washington University.

It was during his work with the juvenile detention school that Bivins began to realize the power of connecting youth to community resources and organizations. He hoped that building strong connections between troubled youth and community would increase the teens' level of self-awareness and provide some incentive to stay out of trouble.

At Franklin, a racially diverse high school with about 1,500 students, Bivins was often involved in resolving disputes between students.

His rapport with the students there was "remarkable," said Regina Walker, who got to know Bivins while her daughter attended school there.

"He has a genuine concern for kids and he knows how to talk to them," said Walker. "He's just kind of an all around purpose guy."

Bivins' "calm and collected" manner boosted his status among the students, said Walker, whose youngest daughter is now a freshman at West Seattle.

"He has a general awareness of how to deal with all kinds of ethnic backgrounds," she said. "I have a high regard for him."

Bivins' tack for navigating students through trouble situations: get them to acknowledge mistakes and take responsibility for their actions in a way that lets them maintain dignity.

"Students are a reflection of their environment," he said. "All these students are going to be adults and they could even be our colleagues someday, so we have to teach them right and that means they have to be a part of the process."

Bivins is replacing Susan Ders