Principal Koeng moves on after 11 years

After 11 years, Trumansburg High School Principal Jon Koeng is transitioning to a new role within the district. The school hopes to have a new principal by the beginning of August and is currently conducting interviews.

Koeng will start his new position as school business administrator July 1 but will continue to assist the high school during his transition.
Principal duties include managing state and AP testing, oversight of the academic program, extracurricular activities and budget, and overseeing community activities that happen in the building. As the business administrator, Koeng will focus more on managing TCSD’s financial resources.

With more than 16 years of administrative experience, he’s had to make his share of difficult decisions, giving him a unique perspective on the district’s finances.

“The worst thing I’ve ever had to do in my job is to tell a teacher that they’re not going to be able to come back the following year because we don’t have the money to pay them,” Koeng said. “In my next position, one of the things I look forward to is making sure we never commit to anything that we cannot pay for in the future.”

Koeng came to Trumansburg after being the assistant principal in the Webster Central School District for five years. When considering moving his wife and two children to Trumansburg, the small class size, as well as the small campus, were selling points.

“Trumansburg has continually impressed me in my entire tenure as principal as a community that is really supportive of education,” Koeng said. “I’ve worked very hard to protect what I inherited, which was an amazing academic program.”

During his time at Webster, Koeng started an alternative program, the Learning Center Model, to help struggling learners. It was so successful that he attempted to expand the program into the rest of the school, which didn’t go as planned.

“Frankly, it was too big of a district,” Koeng said. “So, one of the reasons I came here was I had interest in working at a smaller high school where you didn’t have to fight through so much bureaucracy to do something different.”

After Koeng’s first year at T-burg, he put together a similar learning program. The objective was to pinpoint students who were falling behind and get them the help they needed. With a few teachers in charge of the program, Koeng said test scores have gone up and behavioral problems have gone down.

“It’s all about starting kids off on the right foot in ninth grade,” Koeng said. “If you look at the data of why kids don’t graduate high school, 99% of the time it’s because they fell behind in ninth grade. We work very hard to make sure our ninth-graders learn how to do well in high school, and a lot of that happens by supporting them in the learning center.”

While the program has yielded great results, Koeng credits the teachers at T-burg for the success. He noted that people who’ve never been to any place other than Trumansburg don’t realize how amazing the teachers are at TCSD.

“When you treat kids as young adults, they will act like young adults,” Koeng said. “They still make mistakes, but overall, as a school, we have seen that we have fewer behavioral problems than many other schools because our teachers do that. Kids are, for the most part, kind.”

The license plates on Koeng’s car read “Optimistic,” and his positivity bleeds into every aspect of his job. His belief in the goodness in kids and the well-meaning of parents is evident in all his interactions.

“I was once described by a teacher as being an ‘obnoxious optimist,’” he said. “I locked my hands on that mantra and I continue to carry it with me in every role I’ve ever had. I know I sound corny and cliche, but in truth, when I had a difficult meeting with a parent who didn’t agree with me or didn’t like the decision I made, I never held a grudge because they’re doing the best they can. We might not agree, but I know the place they’re coming from is good.”

During the past two school years, Koeng’s positivity was more important than ever. Schools across the U.S. dealt with uncertainty and stress during the pandemic, and school administrators had more on their plates than ever before. Koeng said he knows he made mistakes but always tried to keep kids as the focus.

“When we were able to bring all our kids back to in-person, we did that as soon as we possibly could,” Koeng said. “There was debate like, ‘Should we wait another week or two to see if things are OK?’ But we said, ‘Let’s do it. It’s good for kids. They need to be in school.’”

With Koeng’s youngest child graduating high school this year, it marks a natural time for a change in his life too. He said he’s looking forward to trying something different but that he will miss the regular daily contact with kids. Thankfully for the T-burg community, he won’t be far and he’ll still be making an impact.