The National Association of Secondary School Principals Board of Directors will have a new member when they convene for their next quarterly meeting: Edina High School’s Principal Dr. Bruce Locklear.
Dr. Locklear was selected to be on the prestigious 24-person committee by association members from the state of Minnesota and from the Midwest region. He will be representing the entirety of Region IV, which consists of Minnesota, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota, Michigan, Iowa, and Wyoming. According to a statement on the school district’s website, this will be the first time in more than ten years that a Minnesotan has served on the board.
Needless to say, he’s excited about the opportunity to serve.
Receiving the award “was an exciting and humbling experience,” said Dr. Locklear. “I am excited to be able to represent the state of Minnesota on a national level.”
This isn’t Dr. Locklear’s first experience with the NASSP. He received the organization’s Minnesota Principal of the Year award in the high school category in 2010. When asked about the award, he said, “I am so grateful to be the principal of Edina High, and it’s a lot of fun to work with the staff that we have.”
The NASSP was founded in 1916 as a forum and advocacy group for the principals of middle and high schools nationwide and, despite the word “national” in its name, in more than 45 countries across the globe. From early on, it has had as much to do with students as it has with administration, establishing the National Honor Society a mere five years into its existence in 1921. The Junior National Honor Society followed in 1929, with the National Organization of Student Councils appearing in 1931. Today, it boasts a membership of 30,000 and growing.
The NASSP is also very active in its pursuit of its legislative agenda. While it did pursue serious changes to the Bush administration-era No Child Left Behind policy, the state of Minnesota was recently granted an exemption to the policy by the Obama administration, so the group is moving on to other challenges. These goals, according to Dr. Locklear, are nothing less than reforming the standards of education itself.
“One of the things that we’ll be spending time on is re-examining the statewide academic standards,” said Dr. Locklear of this objective. “The main question that we’ll be asking ourselves is, ‘What really matters?’”
