October is National Principals Month. Across our 24 schools, we have the best elementary and secondary school principals a school district could ask for! In honor of National Principals Month, some of our principals shared their favorite parts of being a leader at their school and what being a principal means to them. Here’s what they had to say!
Naketchia Alfred, principal of YES Prep North Forest Secondary
What does being a principal mean to you?
As principal, my job is to clear the path to academic achievement for each of my students. I work alongside my campus leadership team to maintain consistency in the systems and practices that increase access to opportunity for all Legends.
What makes your school different from the rest?
Legends embody our school's EPIC core values: Empowerment, Perseverance, Integrity and Compassion. We are Legendary. We are North Forest.
What are your favorite things about your school?
"Sacrifice is temporary. Legends are forever." This has been our school's motto since our founding year. We ask a lot of staff, students and families. The work is hard, but the impact is long lasting.
Antonio Castillo, executive principal at YES Prep Fifth Ward Secondary
What does being a principal mean to you?
It means leading, growing and developing all stakeholders in order to see students succeed and lead a choice-filled life.
What are your favorite things about your school?
Authenticity, joy and accountability; my director's team and executive assistant; and the neighborhood in which we serve.
Meagan Edwards, executive principal, and interim principal of YES Prep Gulfton Secondary
What does being a principal mean to you?
Being a principal is being the visionary. It is leading a dynamic group of people through the challenges and obstacles that come between the school and its goals. It means being a coach of coaches, a listener and a motivator. Your job is to ensure every stakeholder is heard and that decisions made are in the best interest of children. We don't make the easy choices, we make the right choices to break negative cycles and provide opportunities for everyone's success. It means believing through the unbelievable and setting the tone for your campus through your actions. It is the BEST job in the world!
What makes your school different from the rest?
Family, Opportunity, Rigor, Community and Equity (FORCE) are our core values. FORCE is who we are!
What are your favorite things about your school?
Gulfton is the most beautiful community. Like a rainbow, we serve students from a wide array of vibrant and diverse communities. Here we are one family learning and growing together to live out the wildest dreams of those who came before us without access to the opportunities provided to us. We embrace each day with joy and gratitude knowing we are becoming the FORCE needed to make the world a little brighter!
Johnie Flores, principal at YES Prep North Forest Elementary
What does being a principal mean to you?
Being a principal in the neighborhood I grew up in means that I am fulfilling my responsibility to take care of other children who grew up in similar circumstances as me. As a first-generation college graduate, I know that my legacy must be to help provide opportunities for the community that raised me.
What makes your school different from the rest?
Our school is full of love and personality. We embrace all SPARKS for who they are and we rely on warm relationships with our families as partners. We have AMAZING teachers, INCREDIBLE core enrichment offerings and we prioritize initiatives that support our community (like our community garden!).
What are your favorite things about your school?
North Forest Elementary is all about family, hard work and joy. Like the strong community we reside in, we enjoy the people we work alongside (Big SPARKS and Little SPARKS) and think of our duty as part of the North Forest family. We aren't afraid of hard work because great things aren't easy to attain. And, finally, you can't have hard work without joy so we try to find joy in everything we do!
Megan Goldsberry, principal at YES Prep Eisenhower High
What does being a principal mean to you?
I think one of the primary roles of the principal is to create the systems and conditions that help staff and students achieve their goals.
What makes your school different from the rest?
Our students can engage in a rigorous YES Prep curriculum as well as the fine arts, performing arts and athletics programs at Adline ISD’s Eisenhower Senior High School.
What are your favorite things about your school?
We have some of the best students at Eisenhower! Not only do they lead the pack in terms of academics, but they are also leaders in the band, fine arts and athletics programs on campus.
Jennifer Greene, principal of YES Prep White Oak Secondary
What does being a principal mean to you?
II am charged with leading our staff, students and families towards success. That is work that I take very seriously and is my role to continue to clear the path forward for White Oak to reach its goals!
What makes your school different from the rest?
I hope that when you are on our White Oaks campus you experience our values in action throughout the building. Our values are team, enthusiasm and continuous improvement! When you enter our doors, these should come alive for you!
What are your favorite things about your school?
My favorite part of our school is the people! They make every day better. Our students are incredibly inquisitive and love building connections and relationships with their peers and teachers. Our teachers have such diverse interest and backgrounds and they share that with our students. Additionally, our students are incredibly talented, and we strive to display that all over our walls. Our building is a canvas for our students’ talents!
Selina Hall, principal at YES Prep Brays Oaks Secondary
What does being a principal mean to you?
Being a principal really boils down to people work. We have the privilege to work with families and our community to create a school environment where kids want to show up every day and learn. We get to work with teachers to create classrooms that are filled with engagement, joy and active learning.
What are your favorite things about your school?
Brays Oaks is such a unique place to work and learn! We offer a ton of clubs on campus for students, from guitar club to National Honor Society. We promote joy and connection and create opportunities to recognize each other for the great work we do every day.
Sara Kaveeshwar, principal at YES Prep West Secondary
What does being a principal mean to you?
Being a principal has gifted me with the ability and influence to inspire others. I believe our role is to inspire staff to persevere through challenges to achieve incredible results for students. However, it is also our job to ensure each of our staff knows that they are completely trusted to do this important work - that they have everything they need to make the best choices to enable students to succeed. Lastly, we get to use our imaginations to create a vision for the future that all staff and students can be invested in.
What makes your school different from the rest?
West is the first campus that is expanding our AP for All programming. We have all our students in 10th, 11th and 12th grade taking specific AP courses and selecting other AP courses. This has involved investing everyone in four key mindsets that drive our culture and how we operate: 1) We do not put a ceiling on any student 2) we choose radical access 3) we are ready and willing to work hard for students 4) we take daily, deliberate actions to achieve remarkable results. Our commitment to ensuring that all students have access to rigorous coursework with support makes us unique. We all expect our staff to believe deeply in the unique potential of all our kiddos.
Michelle LaFlure, principal of YES Prep North Central Elementary
What does being a principal mean to you?
Being an elementary principal is my dream job. Not only do I get to welcome students to campus every day, open their car doors, hold their hands as I walk them to class (for the babies), but I also get to support and coach teachers.
Continuous improvement is key in education, and I believe in the power of feedback. We need it as leaders, teachers need it, families need it and students need it. The more we empower and coach our teachers, the faster they will get better. As a principal, I get to create a vision of excellence, hire the best staff to strive for that vision and celebrate as my students grow socially and academically.
What makes your school different from the rest?
We exist to cultivate a safe and positive learning community that prioritizes each student’s needs, enabling them to reach their fullest potential with the skills necessary for secondary, college and beyond.
What are your favorite things about your school?
We have a joyous culture at North Central Elementary centered on Mission: Excellence. We believe in transformative relationships that span decades. My leadership team and I strive to ensure every child, family and staff feels included and empowered.
Gregory Little, principal of YES Prep Northbrook High
What does being a principal mean to you?
Being a principal is about knocking down barriers for our staff, so that they can primarily focus on educating our students and offering opportunities that will put our students on the path to and through college!
What are your favorite things about your school?
I can't narrow it down to just one thing, so my favorite thing about YES Prep Northbrook is the partnership and the amazing opportunities that our students have access to and the relationships that our staff and students build with one another!
Brittany McGruder, principal of YES Prep Northline Secondary
What does being a principal mean to you?
Being a principal means having the opportunity to serve a community. Specifically, being a founding principal means being able to add to the voices of that community as you grow. I love working at a growing campus. It’s exciting to be a place where everyone plays a part in shaping the culture. At our campus, every team member has an opportunity to lead and add themselves to the greater collective.
What makes your school different from the rest?
Our team is what makes Northline special. Our staff and students have worked through tremendous challenges and have demonstrated resilience and adaptability time after time.
What are your favorite things about your school?
My favorite thing about Northline is the joy that exists every day for students and staff. Northline’s culture is fundamentally centered on relationships. The heart of our culture is our connections with each other and our students, creating a sense of community through understanding and collaboration.
Jeffery Osborne, principal at YES Prep North Central Secondary
What does being a principal mean to you?
Being a principal means I have the responsibility to ensure every child at my campus receives a safe, joyful, inclusive and rigorous college preparatory education. It also means that I can and will learn and grow as an educator and leader.
What makes your school different from the rest?
The word "family" often comes up when describing North Central Secondary. Maybe it is because we have had so many families send multiple children to our school, or that we have staff members with children at our campus, or staff members that are alumni of our campus. Either way, there is a true sense of warmth and connection shared amongst our community members. This helps solidify a shared commitment of striving for excellence and success for every child.
What are your favorite things about your school?
At North Central we strive to blaze trails of excellence, so others are compelled to follow. We model our “Live the Blue Orange” core values of leadership, hard work, respect and team.
Diana Rios, principal at YES Prep Southeast Elementary
What does being a principal mean to you?
Being a principal fulfils my purpose in life of making sure we are offering excellent education to all children regardless of their zip code, so that they can live choice-filled lives.
What makes your school different from the rest?
The ties we have built with our community and families to build the best school in the Southeast community. At least 12 of my staff members are YES Prep alumni. Three of my parents have become YES Prep staff this year. We lead our school together and truly see it as a family and part of the community we serve. We are an A-rated school in results and in student and family experiences
What are your favorite things about your school?
Leaders and teachers believe every child has greatness within and we work hard to make sure we provide the best opportunities for them to develop academically, linguistically and socio-emotionally. We have strong family engagement, our families are partners in the work we do at our school to ensure every child grows and achieves. We celebrate growth, no matter how big or small. We celebrate diversity and believe that it is that diversity that makes us stronger. We have created a warm and inviting physical environment.
Erin Sadler, principal at YES Prep Northbrook Middle
What does being a principal mean to you?
Being a principal means that I have the opportunity and the responsibility to create a safe and inclusive environment that supports the whole child.
What makes your school different from the rest?
Our partnership with Spring Branch ISD allows us the opportunity to provide students with the benefits of YES Prep academic model and a robust course offering. YES Prep Northbrook Middle is also the model for implementing Social-Emotional Learning curriculum school wide through the use of Character Strong.
What are your favorite things about your school?
YES Prep Northbrook Middle is a special place that offers staff and students an inclusive environment. Our staff is committed to excellence in all things and they hold students accountable to rigorous academic and behavioral standards.
Aaron Simmons, YES Prep East End Secondary
What does being a principal mean to you?
Being a principal means being a strong example and model to others. I have set a vision and expectations for our team and for our students, and it is my job to orient people back to the vision and keep our bar high for what we expect of each other. Being a principal means that you are ultimately responsible for everything that happens on campus. It is a responsibility that I'm grateful to have.
What makes your school different from the rest?
Our values make us different. We are dedicated and focused around our three values: believe, grow and achieve. We believe in the limitless potential in every student, we are committed to personal and student growth, and we achieve by making the choice every day to be the best school for our students.
What are your favorite things about your school?
We are a family-oriented school. Our students know each other well, and many of them have relatives at the school. We have many alumni who are now working at East End as well. Relationships matter and our students and staff thrive on building those relationships.
Brian Vannest, principal of YES Prep East End Elementary
What does being a principal mean to you?
To me, being a principal is all about helping those around you to do their best work. For our students, it's pushing them to see themselves as college-bound scholars, full of possibility. It's about helping them to love learning. For our teachers and staff, being a principal is helping solve problems and encouraging professional growth.
What makes your school different from the rest?
Our families make the school. We are different because we embrace the community we serve, welcoming parents weekly into the school for volunteer opportunities or program opportunities. We know we only exist because our community chooses us. We honor that in the way we design our work.
What are your favorite things about your school?
Our school focuses on knowing individual students and valuing them for exactly who they are. On that foundation, we layer rich academic, social and cultural experiences to help our SPARKS grow into the best versions of themselves.
Justin West, principal of YES Prep Northwest Secondary
Why does being a principal mean to you?
A principal sets the vision and oversees all the work to ensure students receive the best education possible. It's an honor to impact the campus, community and your students by aligning everyone on goals and celebrating as we hit checkpoints.
What makes your school different from the rest?
We're creating traditions that will be longstanding and our current staff and students are shaping those. We support our students inside the classroom and we are their biggest cheerleaders outside of the classroom during games and activities. We have a healthy level of competition that drives everyone to operate at their absolute best.
What are your favorite things about your school?
HAWKS Nation is a place where you will feel warmth and joy, and there is a high level of accountability across the board. We value transformative relationships and work to meet students at their levels. Our school is a place with lots of laughter and collaboration.
Veronica Quiballo, director of Thrive
What does being a principal mean to you?
To me, being a principal means having hope and believing in people and in our system vision and mission. It means believing in each of the students we serve and in each staff member who works on our campus. Being a principal is a beautiful, challenging stewardship.
What makes your school different from the rest?
Our therapeutics program is one thing that makes our Thrive program different from the rest of the campuses at YES. Students at Thrive receive individual and group counseling weekly. They attend a Life Lab class three times a week and behavior classes. We end each day with a healing circle. Our hope is that when students leave Thrive, they understand the importance of social emotional health and how that can impact their overall school experience.
What are your favorite things about your school?
The culture of our program is centered on a collective understanding that we are all working towards improving. Thrive is a no judgment zone that affirms individual strengths and acknowledges growth opportunities. Among my favorite things about Thrive is our incredibly robust therapeutics program that provides services for both students and their families. I love seeing administrators and other campus staff in classrooms supporting student learning and classroom culture. Lunch is another favorite of mine. During lunch, we enjoy culture-based conversations and occasionally get to watch classmates play basketball.
YES Prep Thrive was founded in 2018 and is the first Charter Disciplinary Alternative Education Program in Texas. To learn more, click here.
We invite you to join us in thanking our school leaders for all they do for our students, staff and families. To learn more about our principals, click here.
Learn how you can enroll your child in YES Prep
Want to learn more about how you enroll your child in one of our schools? Visit yesprep.org/SayYES to learn more. The 2022-2023 student lottery application is currently open!