Richard Montgomery’s Damon Monteleone was honored to recently receive the 2016 MCCPTA Principal of the Year Award. The award is geared towards recognizing an individual’s contributions and dedication to students and youth through their work and collaboration with their PTA.

According to the MCCPTA, nominees and recipients exhibit the MCCPTA objectives by “promoting the welfare of children and youth, making every child’s potential a reality by engaging and empowering families and communities to advocate for all children, bringing home and school into closer relations, and developing united efforts between educators and the general public to secure the highest educational advantages for all children.”

Despite only becoming the principal of Richard Montgomery at the start of the 2014-2015 school year, Mr. Monteleone is already being recognized for his extraordinary dedication in creating a better school environment for students. However, he made sure to share the award with his administrative team and the school staff as a whole.

“It’s not me, it’s the staff, it’s the school, and it really is, to a more specific point, Mark Brown, Jennifer Hoover, Kim Heidler, Jon Garrick, Laura Hermansdorfer, and the administrative team – they really do such hard work behind the scenes,” he said. “Most kids don’t really see what the administration or the assistant principals are doing, but they’re such a strong team, and any award that I get is really just an award for Richard Montgomery, it’s not really me.”

What especially sets Mr. Monteleone apart from other school officials, apart from his notorious tendency to occasionally skateboard to school events, are his efforts to create what he called a “common sense of community” at RM.

“We have kids that come from everywhere, and you all walk the halls – it looks like the United Nations here!” he said. “When you have so many people from so many different parts of the county, from so many parts of the world, I think part of what I’d like to do is to bring us all together, so I’m not a JW kid or an IB kid, I’m an RM kid. And what I hope we’ve done is really try to elevate everybody’s role in the school and try to bring the kids together.”

Mr. Monteleone’s plans to build a more cohesive student body included introducing more team-building and spirit events this past year. He cited the successful Senior Unity Day, a field day type event held for the first time this year, as something he “really wanted to do” and a trend he wants to continue in the future. “We’re going to be doing a Freshmen Unity Day in the fall, and the idea will be bringing everybody together,” he explained.

Another majorly successful event expanded and coordinated by Mr. Monteleone was Career Day. “It was a pretty big deal with the community and with the county, and with the parents and the business community. It was getting a lot of good feedback from the kids,” he stated proudly. His goals in holding events like Career Day and Class Unity Days are not only to introduce more opportunities to students, but also to celebrate student interests, contributions, and achievements. “Anything that’s important to the kids in the building needs to be elevated,” he said.

Already honored by such a prestigious award so early in his career at RM, Mr. Monteleone will continue to put students first and work tirelessly to improve our school community. Next time you see him, whether he is visiting your class or patrolling Main Street, make sure to congratulate him on this amazing achievement.