This month, when students return to Hillcrest High and Midvale Middle, they may see familiar faces now leading the schools.

In amongst several newly appointed Canyons School District administrators, Union Middle Principal Brenda McCann returns to Hillcrest High, where she once studied, taught and served as an assistant principal. Now, she will be principal of about 2,300 students at the Midvale high school, replacing Greg Leavitt, who retired.

Angi Holden, who was principal at Cottonwood Heights’ Bella Vista Elementary, will step into McCann’s position at Union, which serves both Sandy and Midvale students.

At Midvale Middle, Assistant Principal Courtney Long will take the school’s helm, replacing Mindy Robison, who is becoming Canyons School District’s school performance director of middle schools.

McCann has had ties with Hillcrest since her teenage years. 

With a boundary change in the late 1970s, her Brighton High neighborhood off Creek Road was redirected for students to attend Hillcrest.

“I’m glad I was a Husky,” said the 1981 alumna. “A variety of people attend Hillcrest; the diversity is awesome. Kids are more accepted here than at other schools. There aren’t as many cliques and the cliques aren’t dominant as to who controls the school. There are lot of different things to do; we’re not all about athletics. At Hillcrest, it’s about what you can accomplish in academics and IB, in performing arts, in several organizations and groups.”

McCann taught PE and health at Joel P. Jensen Middle School for 10 years. Then, she taught health at Hillcrest for 10 years, where she was told “I ruined their lunch many times” by teaching some “scary, gross things.” As a former athlete for the Huskies, she coached the volleyball team as well. 

She completed her two-year administrative internship at Hillcrest, then served as an assistant principal for four years at Brighton as well as coached basketball for the Bengals. She served as Hillcrest’s assistant principal for eight years before being principal of Union, where she was a student council member when she attended the school.

McCann helped with Hillcrest’s online learning and graduations during the COVID-19 pandemic and was part of the team with the new Hillcrest High rebuild and also, with Union’s new school construction. She now is overseeing the addition to the Huskies’ stadium—two new lanes on the track, football turf and east (visitor) bleachers.

“I’m good at it because I’m very detail oriented. I think that helps because I go around and say, ‘Hey, we’ve been in the building six months. When are you going to fix this and that?’ If I don’t say it, it won’t get fixed. As a principal, I constantly keep on top of it,” said the grandmother who states she isn’t the “the sit around grandma,” but rather “the one who will drag her off fishing and doing stuff.”

McCann pointedly said she has “no set goals other than to get kids involved and graduate—and attendance is always going to be part of that goal. How do we improve attendance? That’s a huge question.”

She said the challenge comes since “legislators have taken attendance out of our wheelhouse. In the old days, you could tell parent, if your kid doesn’t come to school, you could get in trouble with the law. Now parents can excuse a kid for any reason. There’s no consequence. It’s a bad thing because the kid who needs that extra push doesn’t get it because there’s not really anything you can hold over anybody’s head for not being there, other than the desire to have a high school diploma.”

When students chronically miss, McCann won’t be indifferent.

“We’re still going to call home and figure it out. We can’t do NGs (no grades), because those are punitive against students and it hurts their grade, but we can say there are reasons to be in school. Our teachers are engaging students in class, so once they’re there, generally, they want to be there. We want to try to find ways to get them involved so they become more invested. I believed when we can get kids introduced to the stuff at the high school in eighth grade, whether it’s robotics, drama or whatever it is, they’re more apt to finish school. It’s when they’re not involved, and there’s no attendance policy, and they don’t have a drive to go to school themselves, that’s when we need to look how we’re going to get them there and support them because I think most parents want their kids to graduate,” she said.

To assure that, she will look at Hillcrest’s activities and athletics to ensure there is a strong foundation in the pre-programs for fifth through eighth graders to build a bridge to the high school.

“I see it with some of our performing arts with drama and music at the middle schools feeding into Hillcrest as well as with a couple sports teams. I’ve seen kids say, ‘I’m going to go to Hillcrest because I want to do that.’ They know when they come to Hillcrest, they can be involved. I think the three of us—Angi, Courtney and I—can get together and to see how we can work together to help those kids get more involved at eighth-grade level so they want to come to school and participate,” she said. “Every student is different, and we’re here to meet the needs of all students. By actively being involved, making sure all the kids see I’m there to support them, is important. When I see the change for kids, watching students who struggled be successful, it’s rewarding. Some of those may be the first one in their family who walks across the stage and graduates. That is pretty cool.”

Long is happy to remain at Midvale Middle as its principal.

“I would have rather stayed here than go anywhere else,” he said. “In the five years I’ve been here as an assistant principal, I have fallen in love with the community, especially with our students.”

As a part of Robison’s administrative team, Long plans to continue with the same systems they set up together.

“I’m in line with the same philosophy in terms of what learning is and who can learn and how they can learn,” he said. 

It begins by supporting Midvale Middle’s Portrait of a Graduate program.

“It’s basically giving the kids the idea they are going to graduate from high school and we’re here to help them. In that program, it’s not all just about academic mastery. It’s about seeking autonomy and practicing with purpose and making all kids feel successful. We help them realize there’s something that they do well and they can say, ‘I am good at it; I have a purpose in my life.’ It’s not necessarily ‘I can add, subtract or annotate.’ It’s ‘I can do other things as well,’” he said.

This past year, Midvale Middle’s enrollment included students who spoke 28 different primary languages, which can be challenging for teachers and students, said Long, who speaks English, Spanish and some Portuguese.

“Something we have done which I’ve really fell in love with is QTEL—Quality Teaching for English Learners,” he said about the national program. “With our school being so diverse and wonderful in that sense, we found a way to help teach our students, so all the students have a voice and learn the content while they learn the language and not have it be separate. With strategies and supports in place, this approach helps all students, all learners. It doesn’t matter where some students may be at with language proficiency; they can learn, and they can contribute and they can be part of the learning environment.”

Something Long enjoyed as an assistant principal was helping students, working together to figure out “their unsolved problems, and how we can help get to a place where they feel comfortable in class where they feel safe in class, and where they’re being given the best opportunity to learn and be successful.” That will continue so there isn’t a barrier with their learning, he said.

The Utah Valley University graduate in Spanish earned his master’s degree in education from Utah State University, and his administrative certificate through Southern Utah University. 

Long taught Spanish for four years at Albion Middle and coached the boys’ and girls’ intramural sports programs before going on to teach Spanish and service learning at Brighton. He also advised the Bengals’ student government and coached football, boys’ basketball and boys’ soccer. After teaching four years there, he was an administrative intern at Jordan High School for two years.

This fall, Long will introduce a few changes to Midvale Middle, which serves about 900 students.

“We will have a student council with representation for each grade. Those students will speak for their teams to make decisions on things such as the best way is to reward a student who is on time to class or what’s the best way to motivate students to turn in all their assignments. Then, the adults in the building will look at those suggestions to make them functional. I’m really excited about including more of a student voice and input on decisions at the school level,” he said.

Long also will reinforce building unity during the school year.

“We will have team builds at different points during the school year. Students amongst themselves can have more time to build relationships and have positive interactions with one another as well as with teachers. It’s one thing to say, ‘we need to have good relationships with our students and the students need to have good relationships with one another,’ it’s another to have time built into the day to be able to work on those relationships and strengthen them,” he said.

Long will begin with distributing the book, “The Circuit” by Francisco Jimenez to every student and staff member. It’s a story where a young boy describes the circuit or journey that takes his migrant family from place to place in search of work.

“We will be doing a book study together as a school and in terms of how this applies to us—how we can reach our maximum potential and what that potential is,” he said. “I believe we need to celebrate the diversity in our school, that we’re unified as a school, and at the same time, we celebrate all the differences we have. I don’t have all the answers; I’m grateful and humbled for the opportunity to help in any way I can. I believe as a community, we can reach those answers and build upon one another. I believe the students deserve the best of me and that’s one thing I can promise is that I will give my best to the students, to the parents and to the teachers so we can work together to make the most out of this experience for our students.”  λ