How a Howard County principal helped a struggling middle school turn the corner

Lizz Hammon’s oldest daughter was years away from attending Harper’s Choice Middle School when the state’s annual rating of schools came out. Among Howard County public schools, Harper’s Choice ranked last.

At the same time, students felt unseen and unheard by teachers, Hammon said, and many wanted to be transferred out.

“It was a full-blown crisis,” Hammon said.

Hammon went to work, joining other parents to advocate for more money to stabilize the struggling school. By the end of the 2022-23 academic year, the Columbia school had received roughly $300,000 in new funds to bring in more hands, including a guidance counselor and a community family coordinator.

But something was missing.

Enter Tiffanie Nunley.

Since joining its ranks in August 2023, first as a co-assistant principal, Nunley has kept Harper’s Choice on its toes. You’ll rarely find the teacher-turned-principal in her office. She prefers to be where her staff and students are: in the hallways, with her rolling cart.

The school’s hallways, which once lacked order with students roaming aimlessly, are now filled with inspirational posters and have fewer kids during class time. Students instead are in their classroom seats learning and improving their marks.

In the most recent Maryland School Report Card quality ratings, Harper’s Choice earned 3 stars out of 5 for the second year in a row.

“A light was shown on the decades of neglect,” Hammon said.

The school had finally found the magic sauce: pushy parents and a talented principal.

A climate shift

Former Harper’s Choice Assistant Principal Rhoda Núñez-Donnelly knew the climate at the school was about to change when Nunley walked in and simply asked, “What are we doing for Black History Month?”

Staff members weren’t sure.

That answer wasn’t sufficient for Nunley. She quickly turned to the family involvement team, and together they launched the school’s first Taste of Soul event. More than 500 community members attended, in what Nicki Meshbesher, Harper’s Choice’s psychologist, said was a “watershed moment” for the school.

Nunley said she was determined to set a “high standard for community events to ensure they are welcoming, engaging and reflective of our school pride.”

Built in 1973, Harper’s Choice Middle School is tucked behind the village center of the same name. About 470 students were enrolled there in the 2024-25 school year.

The school is one of Howard County’s most diverse, outpacing all others in the share of Black and Hispanic children, along with students learning English for the first time.

More than half of its students live in poverty, compared to 30% of the district’s students.

That means Harper’s Choice children are far more likely to rely on in-school resources for extra assistance than their peers at schools in more affluent areas, whose families can afford private tutors, for example.

Although test scores and rankings are important, Nunley sees the shift in climate and culture as the most significant progress.

“There was something in me that felt like I had something I could add,” Nunley said of her decision to be a part of Harper’s Choice. In her early teaching years, Nunley lived in the school’s surrounding community and kept hearing the same story.

“My work is centered on challenging that narrative and shifting it,” Nunley said.

Nunley launched monthly student clubs, established a color-coded bathroom pass system to address roaming students and increased academic support during the school day.

Every Monday, there’s a schoolwide study hall and dedicated social and emotional learning time. Both activities help everyone get on the right track for the week, Nunley said.

Meshbesher, who joined Harper’s in the 2021-22 school year, said she’s never seen a transformation quite like the middle school’s.

Harper’s faculty and staff was always invested in the work and the students but many found it hard to get through each day because of the extra support that students needed, she said.

Nunley strives to hear teachers’ voices and get their buy-in before making decisions.

She also equipped staff with more tools, focusing professional development on helping teachers understand what was going on in their students’ lives, like what it might take for them to get to school each day.

“It’s a totally different school,” said Meshbesher, who was named the county’s School Psychologist of the Year in February. “There’s excitement, there’s engagement across our students, our staff and our parents.”

Nunley said teachers aren’t looking to leave the school, as they once were, which has translated into more trust and support from families. “People are choosing to stay,” she said.

Decades of ‘systemic neglect’

To Hammon, the story of Harper’s Choice is one of “clear socioeconomic segregation.”

Hammon’s oldest child started sixth grade at Harper’s Choice in August. But, when Hammon appeared at hearings several years ago to urge local elected officials to address the school’s needs, she saw all of the students as her children.

Many Harper’s Choice parents don’t have the luxury of time and money to pack a board of education meeting in color-coordinated T-shirts to make themselves heard, as parents in wealthier areas do. Some are heading off to second jobs on Thursday evenings.

“When you see your community as your family, you can’t tolerate any amount of systemic neglect or indifference,” said Hammon, now the PTA president.

Despite the school’s abysmal showing on the state report card in 2022, Hammon does not fault the school administration at the time, which she says “wanted what was best for the kids.”

Rather, Hammon criticizes the district for staffing schools in a “cookie-cutter fashion,” with each middle school getting the same levels of administrators, guidance counselors and support staff. The school community, Hammon said, has a large student population facing food and housing insecurity and a lack of access to mental health services, which is not the case at all county middle schools.

“It’s truly shameful that this school was allowed to sit there in the state it was in for decades,” Hammon said. “No one was paying attention to what was going on there, and now teachers actually want to teach there.”

What’s next?

Taste of Soul is now an annual gathering, along with Fall Fest, community kickoffs and an in-school holiday market where students can buy presents with kudos currency. After-school events feature free flu shots from the county health department, school supplies and more.

As a child growing up in New Jersey, Nunley said, her peers were predominantly white. During her early teaching years in Baltimore, where almost all of her students were Black, she came to better understand that resources are often only sought out by families who know how to access them. That experience had a profound impact on her, she said.

Harper’s Choice’s designation as a community school, and one targeted for additional support and improvement, allows for partnerships with community organizations to address academic, health and social barriers.

Nunley wants to see Harper’s Choice become a 4-star school. But she also wants to make it a hub for parents. Nunley is looking to bring adult English classes to the school so parents who don’t speak the language can learn it.

Families have also received brand-new laptops — thanks to a partnership with the Bright Minds Foundation — giving them access to online education, job applications and ways to pay bills online, among other things.

After Nunley joined Harper’s Choice, her main goal became community building, both inside the school and outside of it.

“I’m a firm believer,” she said, “that, if the community sees that you care, then they’re going to care, right?”