Fun Fact: Maricopa County gives out awards to teachers and faculty for doing a fantastic job. Another fun fact: one of our school’s faculty won an award. One last fun fact: our principal, Rob Bickes, won the Exemplary Principal award for 2022. Last Friday, May 13th, the entire school surprised Mr. Bickes by gathering in the courtyard with signs of his face and chanting his name as the district’s superintendent, Steve Watson, gave him the award.

“I was honored to be awarded the 2022 Maricopa County Exemplary Principal Award by Maricopa County School Superintendent Steve Watson. I was amazed and absolutely shocked to receive this award” is what Bickes said when asked about the award. According to the Maricopa County School Board Website (Which you can find here), the nomination process for this award requires a group of researchers to look through the past three years of achievements of the county’s principals to identify “schools with a history of high student achievement, student growth, and teacher retention.” They compile a list of nominations by members of the board and representatives who meet the criteria. Then they interview the nominated principals and ask questions about how they create a strong student and community-centered environment within their schools. Those interviews are reviewed by the committee, and many applications are selected for phase two. Phase two is when the committee sends out surveys to the teachers of selected schools about the principal and how they help the school environment. The surveys are reviewed and semi-finalists are selected; those semi-finalists are required to give a video essay about themselves and the committee goes around selected schools interviewing teachers and students. Finally, the committee narrows down its candidates to a few exemplary principals and hands out the rewards. If it wasn’t clear from how much they go through, this process takes a long time, but all of the committee’s hard work pays off as they get to award truly the best of the best of principals in Maricopa.

We’re all proud of Mr. Bickes and all the work he’s done for our school in his 14 years of working in this school, and we hope that he will be with our school for the years to come. Go Knights!