Best of luck to Dr. Gayle Steele, who has been South Huntington’s Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Education, as she moves on from our district to become Superintendent of the neighboring Elwood School District. Dr. Steele leaves South Huntington after five years of serving our school community beginning in 2019 as principal of Maplewood. She assumes her new responsibilities in Elwood on July 1st.
“We've started a lot of good things here in South Huntington so it's a little bittersweet because you definitely want to see how things play out. But everyone here is amazing and they do great things here. And I feel like South Huntington has helped me just as much as maybe I have helped them, you know? Because you learn from every experience you have. You make connections with people that you'll never forget and you learn from it all,” said Dr. Steele.
Dr. Steele didn’t begin her career in education. She started out as a caseworker with foster children in Queens after she received her BA in Psychology from Queens College. Working with children in difficult situations made her realize how she could change the outcome of young lives and she made the switch to education, eventually receiving her Ed.D. in Educational Administration. She started teaching in 1997.
“Especially nowadays, those of us in education sometimes get a bad wrap,” shared Dr. Steele. “But we really do make the future. And it's so important to me that we get that right. It's so important to me that everybody has an opportunity to do something with their lives. Something that means something to them.”
Dr. Steele said making the move to superintendent “seemed like the next step” in her journey. “Someone told me a long time ago that what you do in the classroom is amazing as a teacher. It is. But when you're in a position where you can touch that many more kids it's just so rewarding because then you can really see the scope of things from kindergarten through 12th grade. And I'm not just helping kids, I'm helping teachers, parents, and the community,” said Dr. Steele.