Yvette Harpe: Meet Desert Wind’s new principal

Editor's note:Second in a three-part series on MUSD's newest principals.

Yvette Harpe caddies for her 16-year-old son, but the new principal at Desert Wind Middle School said her heart also belongs to tweens.

“Middle schoolers are so fine because they are old enough to be finding out their possibilities and who they want to be, but sometimes they want to be that little kid. I like them,” she said.

Harpe, who replaces Joe Veres who moved to Grand Canyon University, will be helming Desert Wind as it evolves into a junior high school with seventh- and eighth-graders.

The new principal started her career teaching middle school in Meridian, Idaho. She most recently was assistant principal at Rim Country Middle School in Payson.

She said her family – husband and two children – like the heat and golf. She often caddies for her son, Dean, whose goal is to go college on a golf scholarship.

Harpe said she is especially happy to be starting her principal’s career in MUSD because “it’s ahead of the game in some things (as in) teacher evaluation tools and teacher and administrator training.”

She said she knew in her interview it would be a “good fit” because the people asking her questions, including Superintendent Steve Chestnut, asked, among others, about her ideas on how to raise the school’s state grade from a “D.” She helped bring her former school up from a “D.” (On Aug. 1, the Arizona Department of Education issued the state’s 2012-2013 grades and Desert Wind did progress to a “C.”)
“We will be an ‘A’ school here – that’s my goal,” she said. “I want kids to be excited about getting a better grade.”

***ADVERTISEMENT***Harpe said she is excited to be working in “a new community with a different set of families. … Their children become part of me. I take pride in working hard and doing the best I can. These are my kids.”