Academic coordinator Lisa Hinds named next LHS principal

LACONIA — In a unanimous vote by the Laconia School Board on Tuesday night, Lisa Hinds was tapped to be the next principal of Laconia High School.

Hinds joined LHS as a math teacher in 2015 before stepping into her current role as academic coordinator for teaching and learning at the middle and high schools in 2021.

“We have somebody here who is invested, and has proven to be invested, in Laconia and cares about what’s happening here,” Superintendent Steve Tucker said. Tucker commended Hinds for her leadership advancing LHS’ Future Learning Pathways curriculum. 

Board members praised Hinds in concert. 

“You hear often that the district is, you know, moving forward. I think it’s more than just we’re moving forward, you have to make sure you’re on the right path moving forward,” board member Laura Dunn said. “I know Ms. Hinds is going to keep us on this right path.”

In an interview, Hinds described what she feels LHS needs most from the incoming principal. 

“I've been here since 2015. I have had five principals,” Hinds said. “One of the messages that the staff gave me and supported me with when I was making the decision to apply for principal ... was ‘we just need some consistency.’” 

With the behavioral and performance struggles LHS has faced in the past two years, Hinds also emphasized that students and staff need structure. Structure and consistency, she continued, provide the security students need to meet high expectations.

“What we've seen turning our staff and students around in the last year and a half was the strong supports that we put in place for them, [through] high levels of structure and high expectations, academic expectations, performance expectations, especially for the staff, and behavioral expectations,” Hinds said.

As schools work through ongoing challenges, Hinds sees negativity as a top threat. 

“Can't we come to the table and work on communicating better so that we're not being these negative role models for our students?” Hinds asked. In the past year or so, Hinds said that negativity took the form of district infighting — including how disputes between school board members were expressed — and online discourse, where teachers and schools were “bashed” on community social media pages, often without full knowledge of what actually happens in schools.

“That had an impact,” Hinds said. 

“Our students are watching us,” she continued. “So whether it's the school community, or the Laconia community, or a bigger community ... we're showing our students — instead of showing them Portrait of a Graduate attributes, and how to be a good communicator in the 21st century — we are showing them this negative model by fighting.”

“If we came together and said, 'We really want to support giving our kids a better model for who they should be in the real world,' maybe we could stop and think about those things and not approach how we look at communicating what we don't like so negatively.”

Among the earliest female graduates of Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Hinds began her career as a marine engineer on a nuclear submarine. She started her family on Cape Cod, where she then ran a fuel business. She discovered her passion for education by volunteering while her children were students and began her teaching career with a 15-year stint at Falmouth High School. 

After her years as an academic coordinator, Hinds said she is excited that the principal position will bring back, and expand, the direct, personal student relationships that she enjoyed as a classroom teacher, while continuing the staff development she’s enjoyed recently. 

From her earliest days teaching in Laconia, Hinds said, she knew it was a special place. 

“I was immediately just in awe of Laconia and the culture here,” Hinds said.

From the level of engagement and mutual support between faculty to the deep-rooted Sachem pride felt across the community, including by people without students, to the level of personal knowledge and care teachers have for all students, Hinds said, “it was overwhelming because I had never experienced it from the perspective of a parent, a teacher, a community member. ... It's a life-changing experience.”

Hinds will assume her role as LHS principal on July 1. She will be one of the first, if not the first — district research is ongoing — women to hold the position.