Moving forward


Joan Young is retiring after 19 years as Monticello High School principal. (Photo by Pete Temple)

Joan Young was featured in an Express article in August 2002, when she took over for Keith Stamp and became MHS Principal.
Young to retire after 19 years as MHS principal
By: 
Pete Temple
Express Associate Editor

     “Moving forward” is a phrase you will hear often if you talk with Joan Young about the Monticello Community School District for any length of time.

     Young is about to move forward in a different way; she is retiring as principal at Monticello High School, after 19 years.

     “My health is good, and the school district is in a good spot,” Young said. “So I think it’s just the right time to make that decision.”

     Young, 61, will finish the 2020-21 school year, and then work with her successor through the month of July. Her official last day will be July 31.

     School district employees can retire with full IPERS benefits once they reach the “Rule of 88.” IPERS adds an employee’s years of service to his or her age, so technically Young could have retired last year, when she was 60 with 29 years of service (counting her years teaching at Marion High School).

     “People ask why I didn’t retire last year when I could have,” Young said. “We were opening the middle school, and I wanted to see that building open. We were getting a new middle school administrator.

     “And I care about my staff, a lot, and they had enough to adjust to with COVID, and teaching online. With all that stress and anxiety, I didn’t want them to have to come in and work for a new administrator.”

     So she stayed for one more school year. And what a year it has been.

     “My whole philosophy has been, ‘We are on an adventure, and we are moving forward,’ ” she said. “Our students, the staff, and the parents are doing the absolute best they can in this pandemic year.”

     Young said she is proud of the way the school district has handled the pandemic. Over the summer, the district came up with a plan wherein students had the choice of attending school within the building, a hybrid option in which part of the day would be brick-and-mortar learning and part would be online, or 100 percent online.

     “We offer it all,” Young said.

     She has been with the district long enough to see a myriad of changes, from going mostly paperless, to new course offerings, to the Standards Referenced Reporting style of grading the district now uses, to a wide variety of staff members, including superintendents and principals, coming and going.

     The biggest changes, of course, have happened within the past few years, when a bond issue passed and construction was  completed on a new middle school, along with upgrades to the high school entrance and building.

     It is rare for a school administrator to stay in one place for 19 years.

     “The people are what kept me here; the teachers – we have an awesome staff – the administrative team, the students, and the parents,” Young said.

     “We’re a nice-sized school, and we have lots of opportunities for students. It is a very supportive community, with very supportive parents. I would rate it as one of the top schools in the state.

     “I have really enjoyed working with the people, and that’s probably what I’m going to miss the most. I’ve developed a lot of relationships with people in various committees and activities, and I just hope those friendships can continue after I leave.”

     It hasn’t all been rosy.

     “Not everybody is going to think I’m the best, and I understand that, because sometimes I had to make some hard decisions, and they didn’t go the way people thought they should,” Young said. “I tried not to make rash decisions. I tried to make good decisions for students, and just help each student to be a better person, and to be better situated after they left high school.

     “I’ve just always tried to remain positive. You just have to keep moving forward and do the best job you can.”

     Young said she has worked hard to make sure every student has had an opportunity to get a high school diploma.

     “I truly believe that if they don’t have their high school diploma, they are at a disadvantage, and they don’t realize the impact that will have later on in their lives,” she said.

     “That’s why I went into education, to help people and make a difference in their lives. I hope I’ve done that, and I hope I continue to do that in the next choices that I make; continuing to help people.”

     Young was born and raised in Manning, Iowa. In her letter of resignation, Young wrote, in part: “Thanks for allowing this small-town girl to reach her dreams of impacting the lives of so many people!”

     Young and her husband Rod have three sons: Ryan, an attorney in the Chicago area; Brad, a dentist in Maquoketa; and Nathan, a police officer in San Francisco. They have two grandsons and two granddaughters.

     “I give my love and admiration to my husband, who kept things going at home,” Young said. “If it wasn’t for him, I couldn’t have done the things that I’ve done. He’s been very supportive of me.

     “It’ll be a change, but I’m looking forward to it. We plan on traveling. I plan on being the wife, the mother, the grandmother that, sometimes, being a high school principal, I didn’t have the time to be.

     “Your life changes. I have grandkids now, and they’re starting school. I want to be there when it’s Grandparents’ Day. Those are once in a lifetime things.

     “I look at it as moving forward with my life.”

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