Bridget Grady, assistant principal at Sand Ridge Elementary School, was lured to the Dec. 2 Onslow County Board of Education meeting under false pretenses.
Turned out, though, that what she called a “white lie” was a happy one: She had been named the 2014-15 North Carolina Outstanding Elementary Assistant Principal of the Year.
“I was shocked,” Grady said Friday of the announcement, which came from Dr. Rick Stout, superintendent of the county school system. “I knew I was in the running, because all of the county winners are, and I’d been asked to submit a résumé and a paper. But I never thought I’d win. It felt surreal.
“But now that I’ve had time to reflect on it a little, I have to say I’m very humbled,” she continued. “I would never have thought that I’d done anything to merit this. But I’m honored, and I give all the credit to the people I work with here at the school and throughout the county.
“I’ve been in this school system for 22 years now, and there have been and still are so many amazing professionals: teachers, administrators and staff, everyone. It’s a team, a collaborative effort, and we’re also very fortunate here at Sand Ridge to have the best students and parents, too.”
Students at the school, Grady said, help make it easy to be an effective assistant principal, because they are “wonderfully polite and well-behaved and talented.” The parents, she said, are eager to be involved with the school and with their children.
“We have a very special school,” she said of Sand Ridge, which draws a preponderance of its population from military families that live in the Hubert community near the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. “We have an emphasis on global awareness, and we’re an AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) school,” and both of those things require extraordinary commitments to excellence from all school personnel, from the principal throughout the staff.
Sand Ridge is in its fifth year as a themed school: “Sand Ridge Elementary School: A Global Partner,” and has partnerships with World View of UNC-Chapel Hill and has total Spanish immersion classes for kindergarten, first-grade and second-grade students.
“I’m very fortunate that I get to come to work here every day for 7-1/2 hours and get to work so closely with such great professionals and talented students and have such strong support from our families,” Grady said. “I’m very blessed to be here.”
Grady has been the assistant principal at Sand Ridge for eight years. Prior to coming to Sand Ridge she was assistant principal at Swansboro Middle School. She holds a bachelor’s degree from UNC-Wilmington, a master’s degree in education from N.C. State University and a master’s in school administration from East Carolina University.
Information from Shirley Prince, the executive director for North Carolina Principals and Assistant Principals Association, provided by the county school system office, states that Grady’s tremendous award “serves as a way to honor assistant principals who are doing a superb job.”
Grady will serve as North Carolina’s representative for the National Outstanding Assistant Principal Award Program, which promotes educational excellence for pre-kindergarten through eighth grade schooling and calls attention to the fundamental importance of the assistant principal. Recipients of the state award had to demonstrate exceptional leadership in a particular school program and high expectations for their school.
The NOAESP will share the best practices of each state recipient in a document to be disseminated to all members.
Grady will also be recognized at the Spring 2015 NCASA/NCPAPA conference.
