Amy Harlow named Flood Brook principal

The Flood Brook School has named Amy Harlow of Westminster as its new principal. She begins her tenure on July 1.

One of five schools in the Taconic & Green School District, the Flood Brook School serves the communities of Landgrove, Londonderry, Peru and Weston. Parents, teachers and students from each of the four towns played a key role in selecting their new FBS leader.

“Amy checked off all the boxes,” says Bennington-Rutland Supervisory Union Superintendent Randi Lowe. “Her passion for education, connection with the kids, openness to change and collaborative ideas for working with faculty were all evident from the very start. We are so excited to have Amy as part of our team. Students were at the heart of what she talked about.”

Harlow comes to the post from her role as the Pre-K to 4th grade principal at the Washington Village Campus of the Echo Valley Community School District near Montpelier.  She also was principal of the Washington Village School grades Pre-K to 8th. Before moving into administration, Harlow was an elementary education teacher at the Saxtons River Elementary School in Rockingham. During her teaching years, Harlow found time to pursue her love of singing by staging community productions of musicals.

“I learned an important lesson my first day as principal  … my job was to help create a community in my building in the same way that teachers build community in their classrooms,” she says. “I needed to be seen and interact with the students, staff and faculty in order to gain their respect and trust.”

Working through this pandemic has been an education in itself for Harlow. “We’ve been required to think differently and we must recognize the possibilities we can carry into the future.” Harlow is especially keen to have learned how Flood Brook has used nature —  by moving classwork outdoors to enhance learning — in these claustrophobic times.

In normal years during her spare time, Harlow travels the world with Village Harmony, an international chorus based in Vermont. During the pandemic, the chorus performed online. “If you can’t go out into the world,” Harlow says, laughing, “you do anything you can in order to bring the world to you.”