Winchester Principal Named Middle School Principal of the Year

By Jeremy Coumbes on March 5, 2021 at 6:40pm

A Winchester Schools administrator received statewide recognition this week. Principal Andy Stumpf has been named the Illinois Middle School Principal of the Year by Horace Mann and the Illinois Principals Association.

According to the announcement, the award recognizes middle school principals who have demonstrated a positive impact on their students and learning community.

Stumpf has served as principal at Winchester Elementary/Junior High School for the last 5 years. He previously served as principal at Brussels Junior/Senior High School in Brussels and taught math at Carrollton Grade School.

Stumpf who was named Middle School Principal of the Year by the Two Rivers Region a couple of months ago, says the honor would not be possible if it were not for the help of his team at Winchester, especially during the pandemic.

It’s a great reflection on our students and staff at Winchester. An administrator is only as good as the people that he or she works with and I’m blessed to have the best at Winchester Grade School.

It’s been a crazy year there’s no doubt about it. We have about four hundred and forty kids in our building, so trying to make sure kids stay six feet apart and have their masks on, and staff do the very best they can to get through this pandemic, it’s definitely been a challenge. But like I said when you work with the best it sure makes things a lot easier.”

Stumpf has been an active member of the Illinois Principals Association for 8 years and is currently in his second year as Legislative Chair for the Two Rivers Region. He has also been active within the IPA by hosting two legislators at Winchester for the IPA Principal for a Day program.

Stumpf says when he first arrived at Winchester one of his goals was to get the community more involved, which he says has been an extra challenge this year. He says one of the things he is most proud of is the Winchester Building Leadership Team that helped to spawn the shared leadership strategy.

The leadership team that we presented at the Leadership Conference, they have been a big part of positive change in Winchester. A more of a shared leadership style instead of a top-down approach. We’ve had a lot of success with that.

With that leadership team, we implemented professional learning communities. So we have three PLCs in Pre-k through 8th grade. Those teams help make decisions and implement new things throughout the building, and pretty well anything that needs to be done we do as a shared leadership style.”

According to Horace Mann and the IPA, the Middle School Principal of the Year winner was selected from a pool of region nominees provided by the 21 Regions of the Illinois Principals Association.

Andy Stumpf will be recognized at the IPA’s annual Education Leaders Annual Conference in October 2021.