Submitted by Council President Mark Anderson, Principal at Marshall Fundamental Secondary School, Pasadena USD:

With the sudden shift to distance learning and high school principals leading what are some of the most visible components of education, such as graduation, athletics and prom, high school principals shared feeling alone while trying to navigate conflicts between health requirements and community expectations.

Recognizing that we are stronger together, our council’s primary focus in 2020-21 was to build an active statewide network to bring secondary principals together and share ideas and expertise, thereby raising the overall knowledge of our principal workforce.

In our quest to strengthen our network we created monthly check-ins on Monday afternoons. We had presentations and idea sharing, including returning to athletics by CIF, developing interventions for academics and attendance, growing social/emotional practices at school sites in a virtual and in-person environment, creating virtual pep rallies, organizing graduation, preparing for state testing, celebrating seniors safely through alternatives to proms and other traditional activities, and exploring schedules for the mandated 8:30 late start for high school. Throughout the year our network strengthened and we became a group that supported each other and all our secondary leaders. This network grew beyond the monthly meetings as council members regularly connected on their own time.

In addition to building a network and having frequent check-ins to adapt to the changing environment, we kept our focus on our three primary goals:

The Secondary Ed Council is committed to supporting secondary school leaders. As a council we learn together and create advocacy on behalf of secondary education. And this year, more importantly, we became a network to support each other and our ACSA members.