Last school year was rocky. Harford’s superintendent wants this year to be different.

Outside Bel Air Elementary School, a parade of staff and county leaders waved pompoms, played music and drove a remote-controlled talking school bus Monday morning to celebrate students’ return.

But another homecoming celebration was happening inside the front office.

Harford County Superintendent Dyann Mack, wearing the same blue T-shirt as the rest of the district employees in attendance, was back at the school where she first served as principal. She chatted with Bel Air Elementary’s new principal, Katie Scharpf — a mentee of hers—and read the morning announcements with Cristen Culver — her former, and the school’s current, assistant principal.

Mack’s message to the Bel Air kids that morning matched her goals for the school year: “Students, be proud of who you are,” Mack said in the video broadcast. “Be brave enough to try new things and help make our school a place where everyone feels welcome.”

Mack did what a lot of superintendents do on the first day of school: pose for pictures and peep inside classrooms. But that wasn’t her only agenda. Last school year was riddled with controversy that frayed trust among school district leadership, the school board, elected officials and the community. Mack said she is using her deep local roots and long-standing relationships to unify the school district.

“She seems like she knows what she’s doing,” Daniel Reed said before dropping off his fourth grader. “Very energetic and fun.”

County Executive Bob Cassilly joined the fun at Bel Air Elementary with his granddaughter, Miriam.

Last school year, he and Mack battled over adequate school funding — a phrase that meant something different to each of them. After the board filled a $10 million deficit with one-time surplus funds, Mack said the school district is feeling constrained. Initiatives like middle school sports were axed and officials had to ditch a plan to add 20 new teachers.

This year, Mack is going about the operating budget process differently. It’ll be an ongoing discussion instead of starting budget talks in the winter. She and Cassilly already had a meeting about it this summer, and she invited him to a September discussion with board members.

Cassilly said budget conversations with county leaders always start out collaboratively but “in the end, the details get a little rough to work out.”

Still, he said he’s optimistic that the collaboration will continue.

Cassilly often sparred with Mack’s predecessor, Sean Bulson, who was fired in February. Talk of his removal, and the events leading up to it, consumed much of the school district’s time last year. When Mack was selected as his replacement in the spring, she said her goal was to shed the system’s reputation for drama and focus on the students.

Her plan for the school system seeks to prepare students for what they want to do after graduation. Guidance counselors at Patterson Mill Middle/High School in Bel Air, for instance, started Launch Plus, a program where counselors help students map out the steps needed to reach their postgraduate goals. Mack drove her Toyota Venza to meet the staff responsible for playing out her vision.

As counselor Heather Hartman shook Mack’s hand, she told her how Mack’s husband, Kilo Mack, once “saved” her from a mouse when he was working for the school system.

When senior Logan Osteria walked in, Mack remarked that the student was a good host to her and her team when they dined at the restaurant where he worked. The interaction inspired Mack to invite him to an Aberdeen Iron Birds baseball game where she met his mom, a familiar face to Mack as a Harford teacher.

“That’s Harford County,” she said. “Everybody’s all interconnected.”

Mack, a Joppatowne native who spent her entire 30-year career in the school system, seemed to find a connection everywhere she went. At Homestead-Wakefield Elementary School in Bel Air, Principal Jeanna Gentile said she and Mack started their careers at the same time, in the same school and lived in the same neighborhood. They’d hang out when Mack’s husband was deployed overseas and Gentile’s husband was working a shift at the fire department.

A month before she was selected as a student board member, Vibha Nanduri met Mack at the county’s Leading Women Awards in March. Nanduri was researching pancreatic cancer, the disease that killed Mack’s mom two years ago.

Mack’s back-to-school tour ended inside a conference room at the district’s headquarters, where she played a video of a choir rehearsing the song “This is Me” from the movie “The Greatest Showman” for her leadership team.

The singer, Keala Settle, started off timid but finished strong with the help of the rest of the singers in the room. Mack saw it as a metaphor.

“Every day I’m showing up, trying to be the most authentic self, and that’s all I want for each of you,” she told her team. “I know it’s hard, and I know there’s days that you’re wishing you could just pass this crown onto someone else. I need you to just pour into each other and to support each other.”

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.