With the 2025-26 college yr having began on Aug. 11 for all Hillsborough County college students, Satisfaction Elementary has a brand new principal who has taken the helm after the retirement of former principal Paulette English.
Kirsten Meyer says it seems like “coming full circle” for her, after beginning her profession as a second grade instructor at Hunter’s Inexperienced Elementary (HGE) in 1998.
In reality, two lecturers who at the moment are a part of the employees at Satisfaction — Julia McKernan and Lucy Kovach — had been as soon as her college students at HGE.
“It’s good to see the expansion in the neighborhood and see the love and keenness that lecturers have for his or her youngsters,” Meyer says. “There’s an brisk feeling and a love for studying at all the faculties on this space.”
Most lately, Meyer was assistant principal at Mitchell Elementary in South Tampa, the place she served for 2 years. Previous to that, she was the assistant principal at Foster Elementary off of twenty second St. in North Tampa.
At Satisfaction, she leads one of many largest faculties in Hillsborough County — about 1,000 college students.
“To be a first-time principal and have the accountability to tackle a faculty that’s such a high-performing college is an honor,” Meyer says. “I do know the expectation strolling in. I do know that I’ve to maintain this going.”
In reality, Satisfaction has by no means acquired any letter grade aside from “A” from the State Dept. of Training within the 23 years it has acquired one since first opening for the 2001-02 college yr.
Meyer says the employees and oldsters have been welcoming and supportive, and that she is worked up to work with the “superb” employees, together with her skilled assistant principal, Heather Moncrief.
She says she lately discovered that the college’s namesake, Dr. Richard Ford Satisfaction, is the grandfather of Shaylia McRae, whom Meyer labored below when McRae was a regional superintendent for the county.
“It’s one other private connection,” Meyer says. “I’ve to dwell as much as her namesake. This college has a practice of excessive requirements, so I wish to make this group proud and make these lecturers proud.”
Talking a number of days earlier than college began, she stated she couldn’t need for the scholars to come back again and get the yr below approach.
“Pinch me,” she says. “It’s a dream come true. I couldn’t have wished for something higher.”
