Kentlake High School welcomed many new faces when the 2017-2018 school year started.

Among those new Falcons was Heidi Maurer.

In August 2017, prior to the official first day of school, Maurer was named principal of Kentlake following the resignation of Joe Potts.

Potts left his post as principal after accepting a superintendent position in the West Liberty Community School District in his home state of Iowa.

Maurer isn’t new to the Kent School District nor the community that feeds into Kentlake — her latest role was principal at Cedar Heights Middle School where she spent the last seven years.

Before heading to Cedar Heights, Maurer had spent seven years at Kentwood as an assistant principal. Her start in education in the Bellevue School District as a high school teacher.

“I’ll be here for at least seven years,” she joked when realizing throughout her career she has spent seven years at each position.

When asked what led to her decision to leave the middle school level and return to high school, she said she enjoys working with older kids.

“It was time to return to the level I love,” Maurer said.

She added, that doesn’t mean she didn’t enjoy her time at Cedar Heights. “I loved the goofiness of the middle school students,” she said.

It was a difficult decision to make — to leave the staff, students and community but it was time for her to make a change regarding her professional growth, she said.

At Kentlake, Maurer has essentially doubled the amount of students but a good portion of the students will not be new to her. Cedar Heights feeds into Kentlake and she will once again see many of her student’s faces for another four years.

During her first year, Maurer said she will spend time learning the culture at Kentlake and working to figure out how she can best support the school, staff and students.

“The school already functions well,” she said. “It’s just a matter of building relationships.”

She added that since she accepted the position, she has had to re-remember rules that differ from the middle school and high school level.

She said there have been a number of times where she has gone to tell a student to put their cell phone away or take their hat off. Before realizing high school students are able to have their phones out during non-instruction time and they are able to have hats on.

Maurer added she has also had to remind herself of graduation requirements — something that hasn’t been on her radar at Cedar Heights for the past seven years.

Something near and dear to Maurer, that she hopes to bring to Kentlake is a sense of cohesion between schools that feed into each other.

“It can help with the transition between eighth and ninth grade,” she said.

This collaboration doesn’t stop at the middle school level, it can go all the way to the elementary schools.

Maurer said a lot of resources that are available for the older kids at middle school and high school aren’t available for the younger students. She added, she hopes that can change someday.

A big part of what Maurer does is serve families not just the students. This can be done by including the elementary schools in the Kentlake community.

Throughout this year, she wants students to be comfortable talking to her. Going to the principal’s office doesn’t have to be a negative, she wants everyone in the Kentlake community to have access to her.

“It’s important the community knows me,” she said. “It’s also nice to reconnect with families.”

She has already held two Coffee with the Principal sessions with parents but there is still one more left.

From 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21 at Kentlake parents are welcome to join her to discuss what they should keep doing, what they should stop doing and to offer her advice.