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Corrie Guerrero, left, and Katy Wilkins are the new faces at First Avenue Elementary School in San Manuel. Corrie teaches second grade while Katy is the new principal. John Hernandez | Miner
San Manuel Miner
Katy Wilkins is the new Principal at First Avenue Elementary School in San Manuel. Katy is a native of Wyoming where she was born in Casper and raised in Cheyenne. She was a cowgirl and owned her own horse. She says that it kept her out of trouble as it is a lot of hard work taking care of a horse.
Katy graduated from the University of Wyoming. She has a B.A. in Elementary Education, Early Childhood Education and Special Education. She has two Masters Degrees in School Administration and Curriculum & Instruction. In 1990 she moved to Casa Grande with her husband Dennis. She began teaching in the Casa Grande Elementary School District. She also taught at Toltec where she was an Administrator from 2005 – 2011. Her last position was as the Transformation Coach at Ajo Unified School District.
The first time Katy visited the Tri-Community area was when she was working at Central Arizona College with the Science Engineering Mathematics Aerospace Academy (S.E.M.A.A.) for kids. SEMAA is part of the NASA program and the John Glenn Research Center. Katy did workshops for kids from the Tri-Community, Hayden-Winkelman, Kearny and Superior. The workshops included robotics. Katy said she got to meet a lot of people in education from the area.
“(SEMAA) is how I learned about this beautiful area,” she said. “I really love it here.”
She helped start up the Science Fair in the Oracle School District after meeting Dennis Blauser. She was President of the State of Arizona Science Teachers Association in 2010.
Katy says she “loves the stars” and enjoys star gazing. She volunteers with the CAC planetarium.
Katy said that the biggest challenge in education today in Arizona is not only the money appropriated by the state (Arizona ranks 49th in the nation for education funding) but hiring qualified teachers. “We had the greatest teacher shortage in the state this year,” she said, due to teachers leaving.
Katy says she loves her staff at FAES.
“Our teachers are so compassionate with their students,” she said. “We’re in for an awesome year!”
John Hernandez lives in Oracle. He is retired and enjoys writing and traveling. He is active in the Oracle Historical Society. He covers numerous public events, researches historical features and writes business/artist profiles.
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