Dr. Amy Starzecki has built an impressive career over the past two decades, serving in diverse roles across urban and rural school districts. As the current Superintendent of the Superior School District in Wisconsin, Dr. Starzecki brings a wealth of experience in education management, special education, and leadership development. From her early beginnings as a school psychologist and special education coordinator to her roles as a principal, assistant superintendent, and now superintendent, she has grown in her leadership journey with a deep commitment to student success and community engagement.
In this insightful Q&A, Dr. Starzecki reflects on her experiences navigating educational leadership, shares strategies for supporting students with diverse needs, and offers advice on building trust and collaboration in schools. With expertise spanning multiple domains, her perspectives provide valuable guidance for today’s education leaders facing evolving challenges in public education.
You’ve worked in districts of varying sizes and demographics. How have your experiences shaped your approach to guiding school principals through the unique challenges of urban schools versus rural ones?
When I think about my past experiences working in different districts across Minnesota and Wisconsin, my biggest takeaway is that we are more alike than we are different. The challenges that principles are experiencing in either urban or rural areas are so much more similar than they are different.
We’re all experiencing challenges with funding and reduced resources. We’re experiencing challenges with student mental health, trauma, and our families experiencing trauma.
We’re all trying to serve students who are in need of more services than ever in a time when some of us have the least resources that we’ve ever had.
Those challenges have existed, but we even saw it more exacerbated after the pandemic. We’re still seeing lingering effects of the pandemic and the number of students who need learning social and emotional support, or mental health support. I think, at least in our district and at least in our region, we’re feeling that we have more and more students who need support and we just have fewer and fewer resources to be able to offer.
As a Superintendent with experience both before and after the pandemic, how would you describe the evolution of the role?
When I think about what my job looked like 10 years ago, the challenges I faced were different than what I’m that I’m dealing with today. Our needs are greater. We’re seeing shortages in staffing. We’re seeing less funding and divide in our community, whereas we saw less of that 10 years ago.
All of those factors are making our jobs much more challenging. I know I’m experiencing that at a district level, and I know our building-level administrators are feeling the same pressure.
Supporting students with diverse needs can overwhelm many principals, particularly with limited resources. How can principals implement strategies that ensure students with special education needs receive appropriate support while balancing the needs of the larger student body?
I used to be a special educator. I was a school psychologist; I was a special education coordinator. I have a Special Education Director’s License, so I wear that hat as a building and as a district administrator.
As I reflected on this question, I think one of the most important aspects that principals need to be thinking about is having a really strong and robust response to intervention (RTI) or multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) systems in their school. It’s called something different in every state, but ultimately, it’s about being able to have really comprehensive and robust models so that we can have good assessments in place that identify students early when they’re in need of in need of help. That could be social-emotional help, or that could be academic help. Having those screeners where we assess students to see which students are at risk and having staff available helps us to intervene early and monitor the success of those students.
Ultimately, staff are looking for students who are struggling to get support and, from my lens, not all students who need support are special education students.
They don’t all require an IEP. They might require something different.
It’s about creating those systems before students are identified for special education. I think some school districts have a tendency to over-identify students as special education if they don’t have those good systems in place.
My advice would be to create really good systems in Tier 1 and Tier 2 to make sure we’re not over-identifying students and overwhelming our special education systems.
Say “Yes” to Support
The other thing that principals need to understand is having a nice continuum of services available.
One of the things we can’t say as educators is, “We don’t do that here.”
You’ve got to be able to create systems in your school that allow students to have some support or a lot of support. Having different systems in place in your building and working closely with your special educators and your special education leadership in creating those systems I think is really important. If you don’t have those good systems in place you struggle. You struggle because then you start evaluating students for special education, and you’re trying to figure out who’s going to be on their caseload, and what services they’re going to provide.
Empower, Don’t Restrict
Another thing that principals can get caught in a little bit sometimes is a demand for more adults. Sometimes there’s a request that we add paraprofessionals to students, IEPs, or into student schedules. I think research really says that we need to empower our students, not necessarily provide systems that limit them in the classroom. A child might need some adult supervision or adult support, but paraprofessional support shouldn’t be tied to one student in particular. It should be more supported across the classroom or at a grade level.
We’ve got to also then have plans for how we wean that support because we ultimately want to make sure that our students have the least restrictive environment that they’re working in, and that they’re as close to the general education model as they can be.
One Team, One Mission
You have to make sure your general education teachers are on the same page as your special education teachers. Principals can provide training to all of their staff about what special education services are, what they aren’t, and how students qualify.
That there’s not an us versus them.
We’re all on the same team.
And the principal plays a really important role in communicating that in their building.
You’ve emphasized the importance of relationship-building for new principals, but many struggle to gain trust in challenging environments. How can principals overcome skepticism and resistance from staff, especially in schools with a history of leadership turnover?
I’ve talked to a lot of principals in my time who have led turnaround schools, and the common theme from those principals is taking the time to get to know your staff. Because when there is a lot of turnover in a building, there’s a lack of trust because they’re thinking, “Well, how long are you going to be here?”
You’ve got to build those trusting relationships with your staff from day one.
When I mentor and support new principals, I always advise them to schedule one-on-ones with all of their staff, whether it’s a custodian or the teachers. All of your staff need an opportunity to come and meet the new principal, and my advice has always been to ask three questions:
- What’s going well?
- What needs improvement or needs attention?
- How can I support the work you do every day?
As you ask those questions, trends quickly emerge, revealing what your school community takes pride in and highlighting the challenges that need more immediate attention. Making sure you’re listening also in those first months and years as a principal is critical.
Principals that I have seen who have struggled have been the principals who have walked into a building and within the first three months of being there were already making program changes.
They’re making changes to systems and making changes to the schedule without understanding the historical background and how they got to where they are.
Being able to sit down and listen to your staff about what’s working and what’s not working before you start making changes is really important.
Shared Goals, Shared Success
Teachers will bend over backward if they have a good relationship with their principals and trust them, so taking the time to build those relationships with colleagues is critical. When it comes time to make changes down the road, now they trust you.
Ultimately, staff are looking for a vision. Staff want to know where you are taking them, and what steps they’re going to take to get there.
On that same note, your staff has to be around goal setting.
You need to be working closely with your staff to identify what’s your goal as a school.
Where do we want to be in three years? What are the steps we’re going to take to get there?
A leader shouldn’t be doing those things in isolation. The leaders should be engaging their school community in identifying what those goals are and what the steps are that we’re going to take collectively. If there’s a collective commitment to the work, then people who don’t buy into that can be easily addressed because that’s not necessarily the principal’s expectation, that’s the school’s expectation.
If our expectation is we’re all going to be implementing, for example, SEL lessons during our advisory period, and you’re not doing that. This is what we’ve said as a building. This is what we need to do to move forward. So, I need you to implement this because we’ve all agreed to commit to it.
Having collective commitment with your staff helps hold all staff accountable to the work towards your common vision.
Looking ahead, what do you see as the biggest leadership challenges principals will face, particularly in managing the complexities of mental health issues, teacher shortages, and student safety? How can they start preparing now?
I’m always a big advocate for any of our educators, including our principals and teachers, to be advocating at their legislative level. We have to make sure our lawmakers at the state and national level understand the complexities of our public education systems. What’s going well, and what’s not going well?
We always have to make sure our voice is being heard.
I didn’t really think that way when I was a principal, but now as a Superintendent, that’s an important role that I play in making sure I’m connected at the state level with school finance, our school funding, and some of the legislation. But it can’t just be the Superintendent.
Legislators really listen to the voices of teachers and principals, and they like stories. I’m in classrooms every week for that reason, so when I’m meeting with lawmakers, I can say, “This is what’s going really well in our classrooms, and here are some of the challenges because I see it firsthand.”
Collective Solutions
Ultimately, when I think about some of the challenges our schools face around mental health or student behavior, one strategy that has worked well for me is I bring teachers and principals to the table together, and together we problem-solve it.
About three years ago, I created what was called a Safe and Responsive Schools Task Force because, after the pandemic, our student discipline issues were at the highest level.
We came together to really take a look at what the research says works. Get back to the basics. Get back to some of those research-based foundational strategies like Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and restorative practices.
We learned together, and then we created some non-negotiables as a building. If this is our issue, we all must collectively commit to this work.
Teachers and principals need to work together through those challenges, and they need to come up with solutions collectively.
It Takes a Village
When we think about some of the mental health challenges, we can’t rely purely on our school setting to address those challenges. We’ve got to reach out and build those relationships with community partners.
Community partners bringing school-based services into our schools has been critical in the communities where I’ve served as a principal. In every district I’ve worked in, we’ve had mental health practitioners who have provided school-based services to students who needed some of that support. Building those relationships is really critical.
In my district, our counselors, school psychologists, and social workers are overwhelmed by the need.
Actually, I was just in a meeting today about it, where we’re going to really define roles and responsibilities because we’re overextending ourselves sometimes, and we need to make sure we don’t burn out our own staff. We need to keep our good staff and support our staff, and so that means I need to bring other community partners in to fill those gaps.
Change the Narrative
When I think about the teacher shortage, I think we have a responsibility as educators to change the narrative.
First of all, we don’t always talk positively about our own career field that we chose. We have to change the narrative because we want people to come into this wonderful profession that changes kids’ lives.
In some of the districts I’ve worked in, we created education courses at the high school level, and we are trying to get kids to go into those classes in their junior and senior years to be interested in going into the field of teaching. Their dual enrollment classes, so if they take those classes, they get a credit being in high school, but they also get their credit in college paid for. Have partnerships with higher ed to be able to get kids involved in some of those classes in high school because I think people tend to come back to the communities where they went to school.
Reach out to paraprofessionals in your district and look through some opportunities to get them engaged at the higher ed levels as well—whether it’s grants or other opportunities for paraprofessionals to get some of those licensure areas.
We have to engage those people who do that work really well already.
Divisive Times
Some of the biggest challenges we’re certainly seeing in Minnesota and Wisconsin have been some of the divisiveness in our communities when it comes to how we support all kids, whether it’s students of color, students living in poverty, students living through traumatic situations, and our LGBTQ+ population.
How do we support all students? How do we make sure all families have a voice?
I think that’s some of the greatest challenges that we’re experiencing right now in our public schools. Continuing to be open and transparent about how we support our kids is really important.
A Lasting Commitment to Leadership and Student Success
Dr. Amy Starzecki’s insights reflect the evolving challenges and opportunities in educational leadership today. From fostering trust with staff to navigating post-pandemic complexities, her approach demonstrates the power of collaboration and strategic vision in creating meaningful change. As both a district leader and an educator, Dr. Starzecki remains dedicated to supporting students, empowering teachers, and building inclusive, thriving school communities.
To explore more of Dr. Starzecki’s perspectives, you can connect with her on LinkedIn or read her latest contributions on Edutopia.
