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Editorial: Burger’s outstanding leadership
Op-Ed · April 21, 2016
What caught our attention when Hoover Elementary Principal Jess Burger won the School Administrators of Iowa 2016 Elementary Principal of the Year was something her mother said: She’s been deeply interested in education since as far back as kindergarten.
Junell Burroughs added that many friends and family predicted Burger would “change her mind a hundred times” on her way to adulthood.
Yet Burger earned an elementary education degree at Central College and went on to become a kindergarten and first-grade teacher. She then earned her master’s degree in educational leadership at Northwest Missouri State University to step up to her first principal’s position for three years at MFL MarMac before replacing Kevin Uhde at Hoover back in 2007.
In less than nine years at Hoover, “her leadership has established a culture … of collective responsibility and a belief that every single student matters,” West Branch Community Schools Superintendent Kevin Hatfield said at the March 30 assembly to recognize Burger’s accomplishment. A year earlier, she was runner-up for the recognition.
Burger was nominated by the school, and SAI Executive Director Roark Horn said Burger’s leadership is “outstanding,” and that he has seen it firsthand.
“Under her guidance, staff members are participating in Professional Learning Communities; a Big Brothers Big Sisters program and Operation Backpack have been implemented to serve students’ needs, and the school’s early literacy program has been recognized at the state level,” he said in a statement.
Burger herself spread the credit around to her staff as well as the pupils, saying the accomplishments at the school are nothing short of a team effort. We’re talking about a team of some 280 pupils and 46 staff.
This award is neither a popularity contest nor a feel-good prop-up. It is for those uncommon people who see leadership less like a crown and more like a yoke, humbling themselves all the while, paradoxically, standing out among the the 930-plus elementary school principals in the state.
Congratulations to Jess Burger on earning this prestigious award.
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