Highland Park Elementary principal Mary McDaniel says she doesn’t like surprises – but she admitted the one she got this afternoon is “great.” During a day-ending HPE assembly, the nonprofit Alliance for Education‘s president Roxanne Christian and a Seattle Public Schools delegation led by superintendent Ben Shuldiner appeared unannounced to present McDaniel with the Thomas B. Foster Award, given to two SPS principals each year. It came with a $25,000 grant for the principal and her school.
In a post-assembly interview with Edgar Riebe of SPS TV, the principal said her Building Leadership Team would decide how to spend the grant money, though she could easily imagine numerous possibilities, including filling gaps in staffing and services for her students. She’s been at HPE for five years and said she makes it a point to know each student’s name, and to be outside the school greeting them on arrival every morning.
Their love for her was evident too – the students had signs and chants for her before the assembly ended.
P.S. West Seattle recipients of the Foster Award in the past 15 years have included now-retired West Seattle Elementary principal Pam McCowan-Conyers in 2023, then-Alki Elementary principal Rena Deese in 2018, and then-Denny IMS principal Jeff Clark in 2011.