[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 172 (Wednesday, October 30, 2019)]
[House]
[Page H8605]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     RECOGNIZING KERENSA WING AS THE NATIONAL PRINCIPAL OF THE YEAR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Woodall) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you making some time in the 
day today. It is not very often that one of us gets named the very best 
in our field. Such a recognition is very powerful. And today, Mr. 
Speaker, you can't see it from where you are standing, but I have a 
list of the three finalists in the National Association of Secondary 
School Principals Principal of the Year program.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate each and every one of them. They 
are: Joey Jones from Robert Frost Middle School right around the corner 
in Rockville, Maryland; Lindsa McIntyre from Jeremiah E. Burke High 
School in Dorchester, Massachusetts; and Kerensa Wing from Collins Hill 
High School in Suwanee, Georgia.
  Mr. Speaker, we cannot succeed in our communities without dedicated 
public servants like these, and it will come as no surprise to you, 
since I am down here on the floor today congratulating these three 
finalists, that the national association named as the Principal of the 
Year from my very own district, from the Gwinnett County school system, 
Kerensa Wing at Collins Hill High School.
  Mr. Speaker, to meet Kerensa Wing, the first thing you will notice is 
that charisma that she has that connects her with her students and with 
her parents. That partnership that she develops with her administrators 
and with her teachers, that is the partnership that we strive for here 
and the one that is recognizing Kerensa Wing out of 90,000 principals 
across the country.
  Mr. Speaker, Ms. Wing has spent her entire career in service to my 
community back home. I only represent two counties. She lives in one, 
makes that her family's home. She works in the other, having spent 30 
years in the Gwinnett County school system. These pictures reflect her 
work in her last 5 years as principal at Collins Hill High School. She 
has also served at Shiloh High School as a teacher. She helped to open 
our brand-new Lanier High School, and then returned to Collins Hill.
  Mr. Speaker, the passion that is at the center of her decisionmaking 
is that love of students, a teacher at heart. This work, as you know, 
is not a work done for a salary. It is not a work done for even 
national recognition. It is a work done out of a sense of opportunity 
to be transformative in the lives of the young people around us.
  Whether you sit on the far left or the far right, Mr. Speaker, 
whatever your politics of the day are, if there is one thing that is 
worth celebrating, it is those men and women back home who make 
differences for the young people in our lives.
  Principal Kerensa Wing is such a person, and it is with no small 
amount of pride that I congratulate her today.
  She was actually here in town, Mr. Speaker, with her family, and if 
only the House had been in session, I would have been here to 
congratulate her. We were back home working that week, so I missed that 
opportunity to be with her here in this Chamber. But I am not going to 
miss the opportunity today in this Chamber to tell her how much we 
appreciate her, how much her students appreciate her, and how much 
better both Forsyth County and Gwinnett County are that she, with her 
talents, could work anywhere and live anywhere in the great United 
States of America, Mr. Speaker, and she has chosen our community to 
serve.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank Principal Wing and congratulate her.

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