Southern Hancock officials introduced Jessica Neill as the new principal of New Palestine Junior High School during their most recent school board meeting.
NEW PALESTINE — It’s all about working together, longtime educator Jessica Neill said. Making sure students, parents, staff and everyone associated with a school feel like their school is a central part of the community. That’s going to be one of the goals of Neill, the newest administrator in the Southern Hancock school district.
Neill has been named principal of New Palestine Junior High School. She takes over after longtime administrator Keith Fessler retired at the end of the past school year. The Community School Board of Southern Hancock County approved Neill’s appointment during the most recent meeting earlier this month.
“School can be the hub of the community and I’m here for all of it,” Neill said with a laugh. “It’s about the kids, the teachers and the parent because we are all one team.”
Neill, a Greenfield resident, has a daughter attending Greenfield-Central High School and actually started her educational career back in 2007 teaching at Eastern Hancock. That’s where she taught elementary school, reading recovery, and was an instructional coach for many years.
Neill then served as an elementary principal in Western Wayne for four years and was recently the assistant superintendent of Northwestern Wayne Schools before accepting the job offer at NPJHS. As a new administrator coming in, Neill noted that her first priority is to build relationships.
“I want to connect with kids, the staff, the parents, the community and the other administrators so we can work together to accomplish the vision of the entire district and make sure the kids that leave the junior high are ready for high school,” she said. “We want them to be able to hit the ground running and we want to prepare them for that.”
Neill was recognized as the Indiana Association of School Business Officials District VI School Business Support Specialist of the Year in 2022 and noted she’s thrilled about being back in Hancock County.
“I am looking forward to applying my leadership experience at New Palestine Junior High as the building principal,” Neill said. “I am excited to support school staff so that all students can achieve the success needed to prepare them for the next level.”
She’s also looking forward to working with young teens who she noted are great to be around.
“The last two years I’ve been at a district level and I’ve gotten the chance to spend a lot of time at the middle and high school levels than I had earlier in my career and that was always intriguing to me to see the development of the kids past elementary,” Neill said. “Junior high kids are a lot of fun.”
Neill is the same educator the Daily Reporter did a story about back in 2016 when she was an instructional coach at EHES. She was the only educator in Hancock County at the time to have received the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, a $50,000 national award for leadership development.
The Woodrow Wilson MBA Fellowship aims to prepare leaders in education and goes to only the state’s most promising educators.
Neill used the funds to travel to Indianapolis on weekends during the school year for two straight years to earn her Masters of Business Administration in educational leadership from the University of Indianapolis. Neill graduated in August 2016 with her MBA in educational leadership after completing a yearlong project aimed at improving communication between teachers and struggling students in the elementary school.
Neill holds a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from Indiana University – Bloomington, a master’s in Business Administration and Educational Leadership from the University of Indianapolis, and an Educational Specialist degree from Indiana State University.
“We are excited to have an outstanding veteran administrator join our team,” Southern Hancock Superintendent Lisa Lantrip. “We are looking forward to Mrs. Neill’s leadership at New Palestine Junior High and the new perspective that she will bring.”
