Waterloo Schools is proud to announce its 2023-24 Lead Waterloo Fellows: Ashley Clark, Korie Frazier, Phaedra Roby, Jaclyn Spencer and Christopher Tims.

Lead Waterloo is an expansion to the original Teach Waterloo Program, a program to diversify the district’s teacher workforce in support of student success. The Lead Waterloo program provides financial resources and resilience support for Waterloo Schools staff of color, or historically marginalized populations seeking administrative certification. Through partnerships between the Waterloo Schools, John Deere, McElroy Trust, and the University of Northern Iowa, the goal is to help build tomorrow's leaders.

“Not all Grow-Your-Own (GYO) programs are successful, but Teach Waterloo continually gains attention as an exemplar in the national landscape of GYO programs. Accordingly, we are thankful to our community partners who support the next phase called Lead Waterloo, which is a one-of-a-kind GYO program for school administrators,” said Colleen Mulholland, EdD, Dean of the College of Education, UNI. “Strong and effective GYO programs work well because they require authentic and mutually beneficial partnerships and collaboration between school districts, institutes of higher education, and community-based organizations. We anticipate Lead Waterloo will follow in the success of Teach Waterloo because of the continual co-construction of the program which directly addresses the needs of the teacher and administrator candidates we serve and the needs of where they will work: Waterloo Community School District.”