Recognizing Kerensa Wing As the National Principal of the Year

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you making some time in the day today. It is not very often that one of us gets named the very best in our field. Such a recognition is very powerful. And today, Mr. Speaker, you can't see it from where you are standing, but I have a list of the three finalists in the National Association of Secondary School Principals Principal of the Year program.

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate each and every one of them. They are: Joey Jones from Robert Frost Middle School right around the corner in Rockville, Maryland; Lindsa McIntyre from Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Dorchester, Massachusetts; and Kerensa Wing from Collins Hill High School in Suwanee, Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, we cannot succeed in our communities without dedicated public servants like these, and it will come as no surprise to you, since I am down here on the floor today congratulating these three finalists, that the national association named as the Principal of the Year from my very own district, from the Gwinnett County school system, Kerensa Wing at Collins Hill High School.

Mr. Speaker, to meet Kerensa Wing, the first thing you will notice is that charisma that she has that connects her with her students and with her parents. That partnership that she develops with her administrators and with her teachers, that is the partnership that we strive for here and the one that is recognizing Kerensa Wing out of 90,000 principals across the country.

Mr. Speaker, Ms. Wing has spent her entire career in service to my community back home. I only represent two counties. She lives in one, makes that her family's home. She works in the other, having spent 30 years in the Gwinnett County school system. These pictures reflect her work in her last 5 years as principal at Collins Hill High School. She has also served at Shiloh High School as a teacher. She helped to open our brand-new Lanier High School, and then returned to Collins Hill.

Mr. Speaker, the passion that is at the center of her decisionmaking is that love of students, a teacher at heart. This work, as you know, is not a work done for a salary. It is not a work done for even national recognition. It is a work done out of a sense of opportunity to be transformative in the lives of the young people around us.

Whether you sit on the far left or the far right, Mr. Speaker, whatever your politics of the day are, if there is one thing that is worth celebrating, it is those men and women back home who make differences for the young people in our lives.

Principal Kerensa Wing is such a person, and it is with no small amount of pride that I congratulate her today.

She was actually here in town, Mr. Speaker, with her family, and if only the House had been in session, I would have been here to congratulate her. We were back home working that week, so I missed that opportunity to be with her here in this Chamber. But I am not going to miss the opportunity today in this Chamber to tell her how much we appreciate her, how much her students appreciate her, and how much better both Forsyth County and Gwinnett County are that she, with her talents, could work anywhere and live anywhere in the great United States of America, Mr. Speaker, and she has chosen our community to serve.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Principal Wing and congratulate her.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source