At last Wednesday’s meeting of the Sealy ISD Board of Trustees, it was announced that Amanda Conroy of Katy will step into the assistant principal duties of Sealy Junior High School.

The Katy High School graduate returned to the same district she grew up in and worked her way up the ladder to eventually sit in the upper levels of staffing. Now she’s bringing her experience to Sealy.

“When I first got out of high school I worked at an oil and gas company and put myself through college to be a teacher, so I got a late start to teaching,” Conroy said after the meeting’s adjournment. “I taught in my little area; Katy Elementary, had several years’ experience at primary, intermediate grade levels and moved on to junior high, stayed for six years and had my master’s in curriculum and instruction and decided to see what this administration thing can be like.”

She added how thrilled she is to see first-hand the growth of students and jumped at the opportunity when it came about.

“I wanted to be a part of guiding the growth and seeing how an administrator can really change the feel of the school,” Conroy said. “This opportunity opened up and I had worked with Lisa (Svoboda, Sealy ISD’s current CFO,) when she worked in Katy and I just figured if it happens then it was meant to be, so I’m super excited.”

Conroy also said there is some familiarity with the town but it has been a while since she’d been back.

“When I was younger I would come to the Sealy outlet mall and I remember it used to seem like it was so far away and when I’m driving here now it’s not that far,” she said with a laugh. “Going down the main roads, I’ve eaten at a couple of the restaurants here just growing up, I have looked at a couple boutiques for shopping but I do plan to take time to go around and really learn the community, that’s something I definitely want to do.”

She was asked what the biggest thing she was looking forward to instilling here from her time in Katy.

“Continuing the tradition that Sealy has,” Conroy said. “I grew up in a small town so the sense of pride you get when you go to school with people and you work with people and you’re teaching their kids … it’s very easy to go to a bigger school and it’s just not the same sense of family and the relationships that you can really build here in Sealy, you really make the most impact on growth in a smaller district.”

She was welcomed with open arms to her new district that although may not have a principal at her school yet, but Superintendent Sheryl Moore said that will be taken care of soon.

The rest of the meeting continued with the project manager’s report courtesy of Mike Zapalac who updated the board on the progress of the new career and technical education buildings. Renderings were displayed on the screen and Zapalac said the project is about 65% of the way through the design and development stage.

From there, Moore took the spotlight to provide updates from the recent culmination of the recently completed legislative session, and although a representative will come in to go more in-depth with the board, Sealy’s superintendent went through some of the things that will impact the district.

There were a handful of things Sealy was already ahead of the curve on and the adjustment will simply be the reporting of things they’re already doing, and Moore hopes to continue that trend.

“I think they made some sincere efforts to do the two main things they set out to do which was to address high property taxes and to address their low school funding and I think they made some good progress on both sides I’m pretty proud of them,” she said in an interview prior to Wednesday’s meeting.

“They made a lot of good headway in providing additional coverage for what have been some very expensive programs, like dyslexia and CTE and for English language literature and all-day pre-kindergarten,” Moore said. “Those are all very expensive programs and they made some good steps toward getting more money for those programs that cost a lot of money but are very important.”

She closed things out with her superintendent’s report where she elaborated on finding the principal to replace Barry Wolf at the junior high school and added that there were four interviews lined up for the following day.

“All of whom, every one of them, I either know personally or someone that I know and trust knows them very well and recommended them,” Moore said in the meeting. “When you’re looking for a principal this late in the year you have to be really careful.”