BHHS associate principal earns statewide honor

BLOOMFIELD HILLS — Jessica Lupone, the associate principal of Bloomfield Hills High School, has recently been named Michigan’s 2024 Assistant Principal of the Year by the Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals and the Michigan Association of Student Councils and Honor Societies.

She will go on to represent Michigan at the National Association of Secondary School Principals Assistant Principal of the Year competition in April during Trailblazing Leadership Weekend at the 2024 State APOY Celebration in Washington, D.C.

A previous co-student adviser, her student advisory groups, superiors, coworkers and the community are responsible for Lupone’s nomination.

She went to college at Michigan State University for her undergrad work and earned master’s degrees both in education and in chemistry at Oakland University.

Lupone has been with Bloomfield Hills Schools all 23 years of her career in education. She began her career as a chemistry teacher at Lahser High School.

“I think our staff is absolutely amazing,” Lupone said. “The students and the community have been so wonderful and welcoming to me throughout my entire career. You know, it’s just been a wonderful place to work.”

About five years ago she moved into administration.

“I wanted to challenge myself to do something new and something different, and I wanted to see how maybe I could affect the student body and the community in a different way,” Lupone said.

One of Lupone’s values as an administrator is collaborative leadership.

“Collaborative leadership to me means I’m not just making decisions on my own, but I’m gathering input from a bunch of different stakeholders, like the students, the staff, the community and other administrative colleagues,” Lupone said.

One way in which BHHS demonstrates this is through the Student Senate, which was started a few years ago.

“The whole idea of our Student Senate was to gather student voices,” Lupone said.

Students from different leadership groups gather to discuss what is going on in the building and discuss opportunities to support one another.

Lupone said she also values “building a positive climate and culture in the building” and “being an open door and someone who the students can come to.”

“The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Jessica, it’s the relationships that she has built with staff, students and the community that are positive and supportive, and those are the relationships that we need to be successful in our work in order to keep our building moving forward in a positive direction,” Principle Daniel Hartley said.

Hartley is new to the school, as he recently began his role as principal.

“She has been instrumental in supporting me transitioning into my new role as well,” Hartley said. “I’ve been very appreciative of her over these last couple of months.”