On Friday, May 29, outgoing superintendent Terri Holden was sent off by district staff who dressed in her signature style. From left: Donna First, Sarah Chiles, Holden, Jacob McGrath, Corina Denny, new Superintendent Megan Winston, Eline Widman and Sharon Horne. (Photo courtesy of Yellow Springs Schools)
Superintendent Terri Holden signs off, reflects on seven years
- Published: June 12, 2026
On her final day as superintendent of Yellow Springs Schools, Terri Holden found herself surrounded by imitators: several staff members were dressed in colorful sweater vests, an affectionate approximation of Holden’s style.
The gesture was a playful, gentle end to a seven-year tenure that, as Holden told the News last week, was, in a word, challenging — but also marked with successes for the district, and in the end, rewarding.
Holden stepped into the superintendent role in August 2019 with nearly three decades as a teacher, principal and administrator behind her. She did so, she said, with the knowledge that she had been hired, in part, to help address the district’s aging facilities after a failed levy campaign the previous year, and to update the district’s strategic plan. Having left a position as executive director of teaching and learning at Winton Woods School District near Cincinnati, she expected to roll up her sleeves and get to work doing what she was hired to do.
What she couldn’t have expected, though, was a global pandemic less than a year into the job. On March 17, 2020, Gov. Mike DeWine mandated that schools across the state be closed — initially for a period of three weeks.
A few days after the original mandate, DeWine announced the schools would likely be closed for the rest of the year. Holden, like superintendents across the country, was faced with a number of questions.
“How do I keep school going and keep staff safe, students safe, the community safe?” she said.
The questions kept coming, and they changed almost weekly. How would remote learning work, and how long would it last? When would students and staff return to school, and when they did, how would masking, quarantines and vaccines work? Holden recalled a day when she live-streamed a district Q&A session, fielding those questions, and others, from families.
“Watching the questions roll up on the screen, that was hard — I was talking to people about things I didn’t expect to be part of my responsibility,” she said. “I learned more about vaccines and social distancing — it was a lot. But for the most part, people gave me grace and were highly supportive.”
She noted that she and 30 other first-time superintendents enrolled as a cohort with the Buckeye Association of School Administrators “didn’t even get to finish” their planned year-long transition program.
“That was rough — I think it bonded us in a way that we wouldn’t have been bonded prior,” she said. “But we were figuring things out, and then doing all the things nobody could ever have imagined. … You make the best decision that you can at the time.”
YS Schools remained operating via remote instruction through February of 2021, with the exception of “learning pods” — on-campus, masked and socially distanced remote instruction for students whose parents or guardians had returned to in-person work during the school day. Local schools reopened in March 2021 under a hybrid model after more than 90% of school staff had received the first of two vaccination shots. The following month, the schools reopened in full, with all students and staff required to wear masks, with social distancing in place and outdoor tents erected to move more activities outside.
“I think we came together well; the staff was incredible, and really kind of coalesced around supporting kids,” she said. “I think the learning pods were helpful to some parents who didn’t have the means to stay home, so I think that was a good decision.”
YS Schools required masking longer than most other area districts, and COVID-19 case numbers within the schools were consistently under the state and county averages. Still, Holden said, she wonders if YS Schools kept students away from their teachers and classmates “a little too long,” and how that time away might have shaped their social-emotional development.
“I think it was the right thing to do, but if I had to do it again, I probably wouldn’t have kept us out quite that long,” she said. “I think, in the end, our kids paid the price for that.”
The pandemic put a pause on the initiatives Holden had hoped to pursue, including the district’s work around project-based learning, an educational philosophy she championed before arriving in Yellow Springs.
“COVID stopped the progression, but we’re still committed to it and firmly believe in it,” Holden said. “This past year, the whole district had a PBL training from High Tech High in California, and that helped us do a reset — I think we’re on that path again.”
Connecting with other schools as a matter of course is a part of Holden’s work that didn’t receive the same type of fanfare — or criticism — as the COVID years, but she said she’s proud of the district’s admission to the League of Innovative Schools, a national network that allows educators to visit and learn from districts across the country. For a small district, she said, those connections have been invaluable, as administrators and teachers have visited schools around the country, observed different approaches and brought ideas back to the village.
“When I came, we were so insular, but we’re part of a larger microcosm, and we needed to use that,” Holden said. “I think it’s been really helpful; first of all, we brought in new curricula, because these teachers were working their tails off [building their own curricula] — I’ve never seen a group of teachers as dedicated as the ones in Yellow Springs. So we brought in some really good [English language arts] and math curricula.”
And state ratings went up, too — where previously YS Schools had been rated a “C” on the previous rating scale, which changed to a star rating system in 2022, the schools have averaged 4.5 stars over the last several years, which would have been “A” and “B” ratings on the previous scale.
Other “unseen successes,” Holden said, were the expansions of administrative and support positions within the district, moving former part-time athletic director Jeff Eyrich to a full-time operations manager position and later hiring Sean Herbert as full-time athletic director, and bringing Corina Denny from Winton Woods to serve as communications director.
Still, when Holden’s tenure is remembered, it will likely be the facilities project that looms largest. She said she learned, in semi-frequent chats with villagers over coffee ahead of the pandemic, that part of the failure of the 2018 proposed facilities levy was that it would only have updated the middle and high school at East Enon Road.
“That gave me some insight, and I heard from the school board and documents that were left for me that we should address both sites, and that was the premise of the 2021 ballot initiative,” she said.
Ultimately, the $36 million 2021 levy proposal — which would have erected a new K–12 school on East Enon Road — failed at the ballot that November.
“I think what hurt us was COVID,” Holden said of the levy campaign, which faced criticism over both cost and the loss of Mills Lawn as a school. “We couldn’t do much discussion face-to-face.”
By the following year, however, face-to-face discussions — at meetings, work sessions and community comment sessions — began again in earnest, and were held regularly and often as the district dug in deeply on finding a way to balance the district’s needs with what the community would support at the polls in 2023. It wasn’t an easy balance to strike, Holden said, as the Board of Education and ad hoc Facilities Committee were often split on whether to pursue another K–12 facility or a plan that would upgrade facilities and keep them at both extant campuses.
“Before it was even on the ballot, I was worried that we wouldn’t even get board approval, because there was some fracturing there,” she said. “When the board approved a plan to go on the ballot, I thought, ‘OK, that is the first hurdle — now it’s in the hands of the voters.’ But we accomplished what we set out to do.”
In November 2023, 52% of voters approved the bond issue for a $55 million project featuring renovations to Mills Lawn Elementary for preschool through fourth grade and consolidation of grades 5–12 at East Enon Road with a combination of renovation and new construction. Holden was there the following February when the project broke ground, and has seen the facilities project through nearly its entire run — and though she’s toured both campuses through every phase and bid the Class of 2026 farewell in the new YS High School gym in May, she won’t serve as superintendent with the buildings fully open later this year. Nevertheless, she said she plans to be there when they do.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” she said, adding that she is excited for the community to finally get a look at the high school’s new performing arts facilities.
“Our theater is going to be the best in town … and not only an amazing theater space, but a designated scene shop, a choir room that’s choir-appropriate and a new band room,” she said. “This is an arts town, and we ought to have a space that our children can use as they grow and develop their skills, and that the community can use — I think it’s going to be fantastic.”
As she prepares to step away, Holden said she feels confident leaving the district in the hands of incoming Superintendent Megan Winston, who has spent the last year serving as assistant superintendent. Winston’s familiarity with both the schools and the community, Holden said, gives her an advantage.
“She was elementary principal, she’s from Xenia, and her younger sister went to Yellow Springs Schools, and I think that familiarity with the community is an asset for [Winston],” she said. “Her being able to follow me this year has been helpful, and I think she’s able now to just run — and that’s a good thing, because we have a lot going on. I mean, I bet 75% of my time this past year was spent on the building project and legislation, and I think that has really positioned her well.”
As for what’s next on the horizon, Holden said her plans are, by and large, nebulous at the moment: “I am going to do something — I don’t know what, and I don’t know when. I’m going to take this summer and just relax.”
She added that she and her wife, Holly Smith-Conway, will do some traveling this summer, and she’ll attend to “tasks at home.”
“But I also feel like I need purpose and belonging; I don’t know if it will be in education,” she said. “Maybe, maybe not.”
One thing she’s sure of for now, she said, is that she and Smith-Conway have carved out their own space in Yellow Springs over the last seven years, and they’re planning to stay in it.
“We love our home, we love our neighbors,” she said. “We have what I would call a small, strong group of friends. … Now it’s time for me to be a community member.”
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