PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Lindback Foundation is presenting its annual Distinguished Principal Award to seven of Philadelphia’s top administrators on Tuesday.
The 2022 winners are:
Omar Crowder, Northeast High School
Erica M. Green, Russell H. Conwell Middle School
Meredith Foote, Overbrook Educational Center
Michael P. Lowe, Cook-Wissahickon School
Susan Rozanski, Richmond School
Susan Thompson, George Washington High School
Tammy Pierce-Thomas, Eleanor C. Emlen School
Candidates for the award are nominated each year by their school communities.
“To be recognized by the families and the teachers really is something special,” said Lindback honoree Michael Lowe, the principal at Cook-Wissahickon Elementary School in Roxborough.
Principals were honored for their leadership in a year in which students returned to in-person learning disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“To stop and put it all into perspective and say, yeah, we’re doing right by kids. We’re doing right by families,” Lowe said. “We’ve got a great school to prove it and a lot of my colleagues are in the position to say the same thing.”
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The Lindback Awards come with $20,000 to be used at the winners’ schools. Lowe plans to give his library what he calls a Barnes & Noble-style makeover.
“Update it to be more of what a modern-day school library would need to have,” he said. “Not just a place to house books but a place where the community can come together and gather. … We don’t have an auditorium as a school, so we want to have a place where we can bring in artists, illustrators, performers, people to talk to the kids in small groups.”
The Lindback Foundation has funded the Philadelphia awards since 2011. The foundation was established from the trust of Christian R. Lindback, the president of Abbotts Dairies, who died in 1950.
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The Lindback Foundation will also honor 60 Philadelphia teachers next month.
The awards are being presented during a virtual ceremony Tuesday at 4:30 p.m.