BERNE — Marna Meltzer McMorris sat with her mother as the school board on Monday voted to hire her as Berne-Knox-Westerlo’s next secondary school principal.

McMorris grew up in a school-focused home and knew when she was in high school that she enjoyed Spanish and wanted to work with children and families. Her mother, Elaine Meltzer, teaches Spanish at Syracuse University, where she has worked for 42 years, and taught middle and high school students before that.

“My great uncle just passed at 100,” McMorris said. “This man was reading books in Latin until just about the day he died. He constantly was growing and challenging himself as a thinker and a learner. He and my sister would get on the phone and discuss everything from politics to an interesting article he read in The New York Times, which he devoured, the Sunday Times, every weekend. It’s just something that’s always been a part of my family, and it wasn’t really a choice for me,” McMorris said of education.

The principal position is a first for McMorris, 46, who has been an assistant principal at Niskayuna and, before that, dean of students at Bethlehem, where she also spent several years teaching Spanish.

Officially assuming her duties at BKW in July, she will enter a district that has had concerns about consistency in leadership. It has now spent two years under two different interim superintendents, and one of its most rooted administrators, secondary school principal Brian Corey, left in December to become superintendent at Jefferson.

Interim Principal Mary Summermatter has filled in since January. When Corey’s departure was first announced, School Board President Joan Adriance and Interim Superintendent Joseph Natale suggested allowing the next, permanent superintendent to hire the permanent principal. But the board later decided to “expedite” the process and hire a principal by the end of the school year.

McMorris lives in Guilderland and will earn an annual salary of $88,500.

The school board approved hiring her with four members in favor. Vasilios Lefkaditis voted against the motion.

“I think she’s going to do a great job, but the board was tasked with finding the absolute best person for the job and I wasn’t convinced that she was,” Lefkaditis told The Enterprise, stressing that he will support McMorris.

He said his vote didn’t mean he favored another candidate, but that he was seeking someone who would be “experienced, firmer with our current situation.” When asked for details, Lefkaditis mentioned discipline issues, academic achievement, and “stability.”

“We’ve had a lot of turnover lately,” he said, “and we need someone who’s going to be very strong, very firm, very understanding, very agreeable.” Lefkaditis later emphasized that he wasn’t saying McMorris lacks those qualities.

In her current job as assistant principal, McMorris told The Enterprise she has a mix of responsibilities that include leading enrichment programs for at-risk students, student discipline, teacher evaluations, and overseeing data for things like attendance and disciplinary issues. She added that connections can be made between attendance, discipline issues, and struggling with classes.

“Student learning is always the focus and always the mission,” she said. “Everything I do, regardless, is about student learning.”

When asked specifically about bullying and discrimination among students, McMorris said she has experience with a program called Study Circles in Schenectady County, where area districts mixed groups of students for talks about addressing bullying. One outcome, called “tweet positive,” was overseen by McMorris.

“Think of how kids communicate — they don’t talk, they text, they tweet,” said McMorris. “….it takes place electronically just as much as in person, and sometimes, I think, the electronic stuff tends to be more harmful.”

McMorris grew up in Central New York and got an undergraduate degree in Spanish and communications, and a master’s degree in education, both at Syracuse University. She studied for a certificate of advanced studies in education administration at the University at Albany until her father fell ill with pancreatic cancer. Someday, she said, she may go back, but she’s now focused on her work.

Her husband, James McMorris, is from rural Washington County.

“A very, very common misconception that people have of rural schools is that they’re not advanced and that innovative things aren’t happening in the classroom, and that’s absolutely not true,” said McMorris. She said of BKW, “One of the things I was very impressed by was the student film festivals that the English department did, competed at a national level at an oratory competition. Great things are happening.”