Coming into this year, we knew that we would have new faces in the administrative team. But after former administrators Kyle Haught and Dr. Alicia Bush also decided to leave, we now have an entirely new team.

“Although it is certainly not common, it is not entirely unheard of,” said Dr. Loren Hatfield, USD 259 assistant superintendent of secondary schools. “In this particular instance, a lot of the folks that were assistant principals got an opportunity to be principals in other schools, so we wanted to take an opportunity to build a team from the ground up.”

Having a completely new administrative team comes with some obvious difficulties.

“You have a whole team that doesn’t know the physical structures, the human beings and their names inside the building,” Hatfield said. “And you have to think about how long it takes to learn kids’ names and where is this room? And so, it takes a long time to really get comfortable where things become second nature. And so that work at the front end is heavy, but it’s worth lifting.”

New principal Claudia Cooper knew there would be some difficulty but not with new admin coming from different areas.

“I knew I was going to have a new admin team because they all had gotten jobs elsewhere. But what I didn’t know is that I would have admin on my team that were new to Wichita,” Cooper said. “We did a lot during the summer, kind of like getting to know you and preparing for another school year. So, things like that I think have helped us a lot but that was a surprise and how well we just all have gelled together and how they have caught onto my vision for Southeast and how they have embraced that.” 

“I think continuity is more important in the long term. So typically, as a principal, a high school principal it’s going to take you four years to create systemic, long-term change in a way that has the entire building only knowing you and your team as leader,” Hatfield said. “And so, to me the consistency isn’t as important in year to year to year there can be little tweaks but if the head principal can stay the same for four plus years, that’s when you start seeing long term gains.”

Cooper has many goals in mind for the future of Southeast.

“I saw a lot of what was going on in Southeast, so I knew what I wanted to rebrand Southeast to look like this year,” Cooper said. “I wanted to remove all this negativity that the community hears about and to control our narrative and just tell the world and anybody listening how great Southeast is.”