Priscilla Green, the principal at Richmond's Open High School since 1999, died last night at a Richmond-area hospital of a brief illness.

Mrs. Green recently announced that she was retiring at the end of the school year.

"She was very much about excellence, wanting her students, her staff, her school to be really exemplary," said Candace Chaplin, a history and social studies teacher at Open High School. "As an academic leader, she was outstanding. She was very much like a parent in some ways. She was willing to do what was needed, a tough-love kind of approach."

Mrs. Green was a teacher or administrator in Richmond since she became a teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in 1975. She moved to Richmond Community High School in 1982, where she served in various capacities, including lead teacher and chairperson of the English department for six years.

She returned to Kennedy in 1995 as assistant principal until 1999 when she became principal at Open High.

Chaplin said many of the students were devastated early in the day when they heard the news. That was before an old adage Mrs. Green used to say kicked in for the students.

"She used to always say, 'We have to lick those SOLS.' They [the students] are very much of the mindset, if they don't reach for excellence, Priscilla would be angry with them."

Mrs. Green received her bachelor's in English education and public speaking in 1975 from Norfolk State University and earned her master's in administration and supervision of instruction from Virginia Commonwealth University 10 years later.

-- Jeremy Slayton and Zachary Reid