For the 2024-2025 school year, Class of 2025 principal Sarah Goodman will become an Associate Principal at Eureka High School.
Goodman participated in Rockwood’s Ignite program in order to become a principal. She said having principal Dr. Kelly Mignerone as an advisor made Summit appealing to her, so she was very grateful that she had the opportunity to work here starting in the 2021-2022 school year.
“I always wanted to come to Summit. When I was still in the classroom Rockwood had a program called Ignite. They have it for teachers who want to become administrators and you’re assigned a mentor. My mentor was [Mignerone] so I came to Summit to shadow her and I loved it here so it was my top choice of where to go and it was pretty wonderful that it worked out that way,” Goodman said.
Principal Dr. Emily McCown said that Goodman has brought many great aspects to the administration at Summit since she has recent teaching experience, so she is able to bring in new ideas.
“When she came to us, she was fresh out of the classroom. For the rest of the admin team, it has been a long time since we’ve been teaching in the classroom, so it’s hard for us to relate at times. It was good for us to have that perspective,” McCown said.
Goodman said that since starting her administrative career at Summit, she has learned many traits from the other admins that will help her in her future career in other schools.
“I learned how to be an administrator here, and I picked up on different great qualities that all of the other administrators have. I’ve learned a lot from each one of them that I think it’s going to always influence me,” Goodman said.
Since Eureka is a larger school Goodman said that it will allow her to expand the responsibilities she has with her job so she can be more involved with classes and teachers.
“Here at Summit, since it’s [a smaller school], the Associate Principal has a grade level, but at [Eureka] the Associate Principal doesn’t, so I have more time to do the things I love like being in classrooms more, planning for teacher professional learning, and working with different student organizations,” Goodman said.
McCown said that for the next school year principal Josten Oglesby will be taking over the role of the class of 2025 principal which will be an adjustment, but he has already dealt with many senior activities and won’t have a problem dealing with the students. Assistant principal Dr. Joshua Flores will be the new freshmen class principal in place of Goodman.
“It’s kind of unfortunate because our kids really do kind of attach to their grade level principal, and to lose that person your senior year is hard. But [Oglesby] has been involved so he’s aware of a lot of different things that [Goodman] has been working on with students. So there’ll be some transition of getting to know him but he’ll be very familiar with the different senior year events,” McCown said.