As a few hundred Madison Elementary School students sat cross-legged on the floor of the gym for an assembly Thursday, April 14, they were moments away from meeting this year’s top elementary school principal in the state.
That top principal was someone students were already well-acquainted with, as staff from the Association for Wisconsin School Administrators surprised Stephanie Filter with the award.
Filter was oblivious, having been misled into thinking that the assembly was for her recent Herb Kohl Principal Leadership Award. Her jaw dropped as association executive director Jim Lynch told her she was the top selection of the dozen principals who had received the accolade.
The announcement of Filter’s top principal award was met with cheers from her students, staff and family members seated in the back of the gym.
“I am humbled because although they say that I’m the best of the best, really all my colleagues are the best, so I feel like I’m representing Janesville because we have a really great group of staff and administrators,” Filter told The 69. “So I feel like it just is a good thing for us in Janesville to be able to spotlight everything that we do—Madison is just a piece of it.”
Filter, an alumna of Madison Elementary who grew up in a house just a short walk from the school, has been the principal there for the last eight years. She will go on to represent the state alongside a group of four dozen other educators at the nationwide American Association of School Administrators in Washington, D.C., this fall.
Association President Jerry Pritzl said the association selected Filter because it was “evident” she is dedicated to seeing needs her students have and because of the way she works to remove those barriers and prepare students for learning.
“It’s her work in the building of the social (and) emotional needs of these kids and systematically addressing that and making it a priority for her staff to put in systems to address those needs so that the kids can go into higher levels,” Pritzl said.
The award includes $1,000 that the winning principal can put toward any project of their choosing at the school. Filter said the prize money will be used to establish a reading garden in the school’s courtyard.
Prior to becoming principal at Madison, Filter was a social worker at the school and others around the district for two decades.
Teaching is “in her blood,” Filter said, as many of her immediate family members work in education. Her parents had instilled the importance of education in Filter and her siblings at a young age, as her father came from a poor family and could only afford college because of the GI Bill that rewarded his service in the Korean War.
Seeing how education changed her father’s life, Filter now brings that mentality to Madison Elementary through her focus on supporting social-emotional learning and making sure students are able to learn despite the challenges or trauma they might have experienced outside of school.
“I really feel like education is the one thing that can help kids do whatever it is that they want to do. … You can dream big, and this is what gets you there,” she said. “Kids need to be ready to learn, so you have to start with that, and that’s what we do here.”
