Harrill’s ‘hands-on’ style leads to CMS Principal of the Year award

by Chuck Gordon

When her students were getting ready to return to Providence High School in August of 2021 after 18 months of Covid-19-induced remote learning, principal Tracey Harrill '14 (Ed.D.) faced a predicament. Her teachers were looking to her for guidance during an unprecedented situation.

"I've never principaled through Covid before, any more than you all have taught through Covid before," she told them. "The answer is not coming to us in an email from somebody out there. We've got to figure it out."

To do so, Harrill thought back to some of her Wingate classes, specifically learning about Ron Edmonds' and Larry Lezotte's work in the '70s, '80s and '90s on "correlates for effective schools."

"I thought, That sounds pretty applicable to today," she says. "Whatever made schools effective in the late '70s and early '80s probably works now too."

Harrill and her staff went back to the basics, retraining students on the fundamentals of being in a classroom and then following the no-nonsense recipe that has made Providence High a high-performing school: a safe and orderly environment, good family communication, strong instruction in the classroom, and a strong administrative team. It worked like a charm, and Providence was soon back to the high-achieving institution it has been since Harrill came on board in 2008.

Late last month, Harrill was rewarded for maintaining an effective school by being named Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' Principal of the Year. She goes on to compete for North Carolina Principal of the Year 2025.

Harrill admits that, with Providence in a higher sociodemographic area, the majority of her students enter high school as relatively high academic achievers. But that can also make it difficult to show growth. By concentrating on the basics - many of which were reinforced during her doctoral studies at Wingate - she has led her faculty and staff to expect even more out of her students.

In all of Harrill's previous 15 years at Providence High, the school has met or exceeded local, state and national goals. For the past two years, Providence has been ranked the highest-performing comprehensive high school in North Carolina when it comes to growth.

"We've bought into the idea that we can't use the fact that our students are higher performing as an excuse not to teach them well the next year," she says.

The secret sauce, Harrill says, is her teachers.

"It starts with high-quality teachers," she says. "I have to do a good job hiring. I promise you I cannot teach math. My abilities end at the door of the math classroom. I've got to hire somebody really, really strong who knows the content, knows the North Carolina standards and knows how to teach that to students. And then we give them the resources they need and help them when they ask.

"I have a lot of trust in the teachers being able to do their job in the classroom."

Harrill started her career teaching at Independence High School, then in short order became an assistant principal and then principal at a middle school, and she led a couple of other middle schools before coming to Providence in 2008.

She also spent a year and a half working for CMS' central office, leading professional development. She admits that the job is important, but she wasn't built to sit behind a desk, so she left to get back into the schools.

"I'm very hands-on," she says. "I like to be involved in lots of things. I like to be in and out of my office around the school. I'm not a very good delegator, and that's not a leadership style I would recommend. But I do know a lot, because I'm involved in all the details."

Harrill enrolled at Wingate after being an adjunct professor at Winthrop University. She was told she'd need a doctorate to continue, and separately other people mentioned to her about going back to school, so she took it as a sign.

She hasn't regretted it. Harrill says she learned lots about effective management, the use of data, and other things she uses on a daily basis. She says she really liked the fact that her instructors had all been in the classroom and in administration.

"The education I got was very practical," she says. "It wasn't a bunch of theory you put on a shelf."

Nov. 8, 2024

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