Norton appointed to FHSAA board
Jim Norton, the superintendent of Gulf District Schools, was appointed to the Florida High School Athletic Association Board of Directors by Governor Ron DeSantis on August 22.
The FHSAA Board of Directors is the executive authority of the Association, which is a not-for-profit organization designated by the Florida Legislature as the governing organization to regulate all interscholastic activities of high schools in Florida.
Norton will serve a three-year terms and is eligible to succeed himself in office once.
He joins seven other new appointees to the 13-member board, which was overhauled by the Florida legislature earlier this year. The boards remaining members will be elected by membership.
“I think Governor DeSantis and the legislature have become frustrated with the FHSAA over the last few years,” said Norton. “…I think that I’ve been an advocate for change, and that doesn’t mean that we’re after the leadership of the FHSAA, but there has to be new blood, new ideas, new minds, new thoughts that represent the large values that are the bulk of people in the state of Florida, but also the small, local places we comes from’s values.”
“… We’ve got to make it more local. We can’t make it bigger than Florida.”
Norton said he first began seeking an appointment to the FHSAA board several years ago and submitted an application for the position in May of this year.
Along with being the superintendent of Gulf District Schools, Norton is the President of the local Lions Club and was previously appointed to the Gulf Coast State College District Board of Trustees.
Norton earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from Troy University and his juris doctor from Faulkner University.
Meet the Editor
Wendy Weitzel, The Star’s digital editor, joined the news outlet in August 2021, as a reporter covering primarily Gulf County.
Prior to then, she interned for Oklahoma-based news wire service Gaylord News and for Oklahoma City-based online newspaper NonDoc.com during her four years at the University of Oklahoma, from which she graduated in May with degrees in online journalism and political science.
While at OU, Weitzel was selected as Carnegie-Knight News21 Investigative Fellow among 30 top journalism students from around the country. She also was senior editor managing a 12-person newsroom in coordination with Oklahoma Watch, a non-profit news organization in eastern Oklahoma.