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Kansas City, Kan. — The Kansas City, Kansas, Public School District is welcoming a new superintendent. 

Dr. Anna Stubblefield has with 23 years of experience in teaching and educational administration.

She currently serves as deputy superintendent in Lawrence Public Schools.  She is intimately familiar with many of the dynamics and challenges the district faces and has no shortage of difficult tasks ahead.

Students in KCK Public Schools are learning in classrooms once again.  It comes after a full year of online learning.

“What I’m energized and excited about is we learned a lot during this pandemic about what works and how to engage students and it’s an opportunity for us to rethink and reimagine what school looks like for our students to engage them and connect them to what comes up in the world,” Dr. Stubblefield said.

Educators know many students will need extra support this fall, and Dr. Stubblefield hopes under her leadership the district can build upon the pre-COVID gains of long-struggling student achievement.

“We just need to look at what was working before and those places we can build off it, those lessons we learned from the pandemic, those things that are engaging to our students and making sure we’re addressing their social emotional well-being, because without that you can’t even start to learn,” said Dr. Stubblefield.

Parents and the community pitched in their hopes for a new superintendent during four virtual town halls in January.  But despite promises for an open, transparent process, finalists were not introduced to the public.

The school board believes Dr. Stubblefield will hit the ground running and be embraced by the community who wanted a leader with local roots.

“We think it’s going to be a great match for our community and us for her and we can’t wait for her to be out hitting the ground to meet people in public as best we can with COVID but we’re really going to ask the community to work with us to make the transition as successful as we can,” Randy Lopez. KCKPS Board of Education President, said.

Dr. Stubblefield will oversee roughly 22,000 students.  Her contract officially begins July 1st.