She heads the biggest school in Bermuda so perhaps it should come as no surprise that Kalmar Richards, principle of CedarBridge Academy, is so hard to get an audience with.

She herself admits: ?I need two or three months notice to do things in the community. I have to plan for everything.?

Attempts to set up a meeting with her are difficult because of her punishing schedule and it takes quite a few weeks of trying before I am able to sit down with her for an informal chat.

It?s during that conversation that I tell her what I?m really after ? an in-depth ?official? interview. She would like to, she says, but as a civil servant she must have permission from the Ministry of Education.

I spend the next week firing off e-mails to the Ministry and liasing with Mrs. Richards? personal assistant on a suitable date. I keep being told by the Ministry that I can definitely talk to her but Mrs Richards? PA insists she has still not been given the go-ahead.

Appointments get cancelled and at one stage a Ministry public affairs officer suggests he sit in on the interview. The thought of trying to do battle with another person?s diary is almost too much for me.

I say ?no thank you?, slightly puzzled as to why the Ministry should need to act as chaperone to a highly intelligent but clearly very loyal head teacher.

I have heard Mrs. Richards speak publicly before ? to a warm and receptive audience of parents at CedarBridge ? and she is all about emphasising the positives. The chances of her saying anything off-message, I suspect, are practically non-existent. I am right.

Later, the Ministry of Education apologised for the difficulties in setting up the interview. A spokesman said it was due to miscommunication, adding: ?The Ministry is, of course, supportive.?

When I finally get to sit down with her, Mrs. Richards is a forthcoming interviewee, so long as the questions are to her liking. When I ask about recent incidents at CedarBridge, such as the discovery of a student with a pellet gun, home made bottle bombs being found at the school or the bomb hoax which led to staff and students being evacuated, the shutters come down.

?They are under Police investigation,? she says. ?Once something becomes a matter that the Police is dealing with I?m not permitted to speak on that.?

In truth, she had not spoken much on the incidents before, but she is in a tough position. The Ministry is her employer and the Ministry won?t let her say anything to the Press without its say-so. The option to speak freely is not open to Mrs. Richards.

She does let slip that a student actually threw one of the bottle bombs during a lunch break but that there were no injuries.

She tells me that the above-mentioned incidents were ?unusual?.

?I would be concerned if unusual incidents would cause the public to change their perception of our school,? she says. ?What?s going on all the time are positives at our school.

?We have to help the public to keep things in perspective. These incidents were out of the ordinary.?

She also emphasises that the number of students being referred for discipline problems has gone down this year.

Mrs. Richards? says that before last month?s incidents she was planning an event to celebrate students? good behaviour.

?We hadn?t had any major incidents,? she says. ?It?s unfortunate that a couple of students decided to do some things that were contrary to what we expect from students.?

The expectations for students at CedarBridge are certainly high. Each and every day, and often more than once, students must say the affirmation: ?I am a CedarBridge Academy student. All that I think, say and do will be excellent because I am an excellent individual.?

It delights Mrs. Richards that former pupils still stop her in the street to repeat those words.

?I expect them to come here every day making good decisions,? she says. ?When a student chooses not to, we hope our (other) students do put it into perspective. I also help staff put it into perspective.?

A question about the incident which led to students being sent home from CedarBridge in March ? when a boy who made a lewd remark was suspended but allowed straight back to school pending an appeal and teachers held an emergency meeting ? is met with a succinct reply.

?It?s my understanding that that whole matter is a matter with the Ministry,? says Mrs. Richards.

What about the subsequent work-to-rule, which has now ended, and her relationship with her staff?

?What I can say is that the issues that related to the work-to rule are between the BUT (Bermuda Union of Teachers) and the Ministry,? she says.

?I can say that I?m very privileged to work with the staff members that I have here. I have very committed people who go the extra mile for young people and I can say on a daily basis who we endeavour to acknowledge for their contributions. I enjoy working with our staff; I enjoy celebrating our staff for the things we do.?

To that end, she has introduced the CedarBerry awards ? a chance for parents and pupils to nominate deserving teachers. That initiative, along with the Bermuda Onion and Extra Mile awards for praiseworthy staff, is all part of Mrs. Richards? philosophy of empowering through praise.

It?s when talking about this strategy ? and particularly how it works with young people ? that Mrs. Richards? face lights up.

?How a child sees him or herself is determined by what an adult says. We really have to affirm young people. Eventually success breeds success.?

She believes that parents are the key to discipline and she aims to involve them in all aspects of school life. Eventually she?d like to see some parents teach courses at the school and this academic year CedarBridge has run 28 parenting workshops.

Mrs. Richards also invites parents to sit with their offspring at break times (a concept which makes my inner-teenager shudder), to come into classes if their children are misbehaving and to ensure they get to school on time each and every day if they have an attendance problem.

?We do that because it?s a punishment,? she says. ?We haven?t had to do it that often and the parents come and I think that?s a deterrent.?

She adds: ?In terms of discipline I believe it starts at home. The foundation has to be laid and laid very early. Parents have to set expectations and rules for their children. Rules that are going to help their children survive in the greater community. They have to be constantly in force.?

The majority of CedarBridge parents, she believes, are fulfilling that responsibility. ?The parents, I find, are very supportive. They want their children to do well.

?The majority of our parents are sharp. If there is any little drop in the grade they are into school.?

Mrs. Richards could not disagree more strongly with Mr. Charles? assertion last week that there are ?out of control? youngsters in her school.

?I can?t recall the last time that Mr. Mike Charles has been in this building,? she counters. ?I?m here every day. Our teachers are here every day. Out of control means that we can?t manage the children in our building and that is not the case. A child who was out on control, that child would not be at CedarBridge.?

Mrs. Richards took over as principle of CedarMrs. Richards took over as principle of CedarBridge in 1999 when the school was just two years old. She still considers it a new school and though she was quoted back then as saying she expected to take five years to turn it into a ?first-class? institution, she says now that ten to 12 years is a more realistic goal.

?One of the things that I had to do was to get everybody on the same page with respect to expectations,? she says. ?Students, parents, staff. Putting benchmarks in place.?

Was she was daunted by the task?

?The job of dealing with children?s lives is so serious, no matter where you are, that the focus has always been ?what can we do to help children achieve? What can we do to set them up for success?? That?s what I think about day in, day out.

?I just know that we, all of us, are called to help transform lives. For me, it?s something I have always wanted to do.?

Her targets include students having a 95 percent attendance record and no more than three discipline referrals over the course of a year.

One of Mrs. Richards? favourite words is ?respect? and she insists students show it to staff and to one another.

Those who don?t and who misbehave in other ways are monitored by teams of teachers who meet each week. Pupils whose grades are down are given tutorials to try to reverse the trend and must attend homework club.

?The children say ?Mrs. Richards, you are very strict? and I know parents say that,? she says. ?For me, it?s a compliment.?

Yet despite her strong leadership and a raft of initiatives aimed at helping students, CedarBridge?s graduation rate remains low.

Last year, of the 154 students who started the senior four year at CedarBridge, just 74 or 49 percent graduated with a Bermuda School Certificate (BSC).

I ask the Ministry for figures for the previous two years to compare but haven?t received them by my deadline.

Mrs. Richards says the CedarBridge graduation rate is steadily rising, but admits: ?We are not satisfied with the rate and we are working with students and their parents to help students.?

So why is it still so low?

?Sometimes students get behind in their credits (for the certificate) if they have not passed a course,? she explains.

?They have to redo the course. If a students gets behind on credits it means that at the end of the four years they may not have 112 credits and so may need to come back for a fifth year. So, of course those students go down as not graduating that year.?

It seems to me that those students have not graduated i.e. don?t have a BSC after four years so the figures show the true picture.

?They are very capable students,? replies Mrs. Richards.

She points out that it?s not fair to compare the public schools? graduation rates with those of the private schools since the latter have a selective entry policy.

Her own son is already at CedarBridge ? ?doing exceptionally well? ? and her daughter will take up a place there next year.

?I believe in public education,? she says. ?I believe that my children are able to get a quality education in the system that we have in place.?

There is no question that Mrs. Richards has the experience ? she was a teacher at Berkeley Institute for seven years, a mentor teacher at schools across the Island for three years and principal of Somerset Primary for three years ? and the commitment to lead the school.

Herself a product of the public education system ? Purvis Primary, Warwick Academy before it became private and Bermuda College ? she won a teacher training scholarship and went on to become one of the top three students in the School of Education at Acadia University in Canada.

She says she is proud that the number of students going on to overseas colleges from CedarBridge has increased since she became principal.

I ask the Ministry if there are any statistics on that, but am told, surprisingly, that records haven?t been kept.

Whatever the figures could have told us, Mrs. Richards is clearly passionate about children and cares deeply for the students at her school and elsewhere.

She recently earned a Queen?s Certificate and Badge of Honour in the New Years Honours for her work in education and with children at Mount Zion AME Church in Southampton.

?They are lovely,? she beams, when I ask her to sum up CedarBridge students. ?I look forward to coming in every day and I enjoy my interactions with students. I have found that every time we raise the bar they are able to jump over it.?

But the big mystery of why so many children at a school led by such a dedicated, determined individual are not achieving academic success remains.

Before I end the interview I ask if Mrs. Richards has anything to add. She nods vigorously.

?The community really needs to support CedarBridge,? she says. ?These are the children who are going to shape what our community is going to be like in the future.

?We have some outstanding young people in the building and they need to be told that by the community as well.?