Gainesville — The Mustangs of St. Mary’s School have welcomed a new principal this year — Karen Lee.

“It has been a busy, busy summer,” Lee said of becoming the new principal for St. Mary’s and getting ready for the new school year.

Lee came to St. Mary’s from Callisburg Elementary School where she was a teacher and then an assistant principal for several years.

“I was moving into the role of principal at Callisburg, is what the plan was there before this position came open, so I had been preparing to be a principal,” Lee said.

The principal at St. Mary’s School is both an academic and a spiritual role model for the students, she continued.

“I think the two greatest gifts a parent can give their kids are faith and education,” she noted for the students and her own children. “You’re forming the entire individual. Shaping those students into young men and women to go out there.

“Academically we offer an excellent program, and we get to combine that with the values and morals we teach in all of our studies,” she added. “At St. Mary’s I’m very blessed because I get to be a spiritual leader as well. That’s one of the reasons I decided to move to St. Mary’s.”

The tradition of gathering the students together in the gym to pray every morning and at the end of school continues.

“We get to thank the Lord for us being here and we get to listen to prayers of petitions from our students,” Lee noted. “And of course we do our pledges, and it’s such a neat time for the family to come together. So, that’s how we start our day. And at the end of the day we get together and we pray again before they go home. That is tradition. You just see those traditional Christian values involved in our teaching every day.”

Lee said she likes that the school can teach these things because they “can’t do that in public school any more.”

Another reason she is so complimentary of her new school is the feeling of close community there.

“This is a family,” she said of the students and the school community. “When I spoke with the students yesterday, I mean there are 143 students here and they are a family. It’s a community. The parents too, it’s just been amazing. That’s been the greatest part of it, that it is close-knit.”

Moving into education administration after teaching for several years was a way for Lee to reach for additional opportunities.

“In administration, you really have the opportunity to impact a lot more children,” she noted.

Providing leadership for teachers is her other major job responsibility.

“The ultimate role of a principal is an instructional leader,” she said.

Born and raised in Arlington, Lee received her bachelor of business administration in marketing at the University of Texas at Arlington and then worked with Eastman Kodak. When she realized that she wanted to be a teacher, she went back to school to earn her teaching certificate from UTA. She then taught in the Arlington Independent School District for several years.

She moved to Gainesville with her family in 1998 and taught in the Callisburg ISD for two years. She then wanted to move into administration and went back to school for her administration degree, earning her Masters in Education from Texas Woman’s University.

Moss Lake Road in Cooke County is where the Lees have taken up residence, with 30 acres and lots of animals.

Her husband Shane is a fireman with the Gainesville Fire Department.

“He is a positive, the glass is always half-full kind of person, so I lean on him during those times of ‘oh, poor me’ and he’s just a happy, positive person,” she said. “Very busy, he has many irons in the fire as we also have a landscaping and irrigation business and own the moving company, Rescue Me Movers.”

Together they have two sons: Gage is in the fourth grade and Payne is in the second grade.

For hobbies, she enjoys spending time at Lake Texoma and Moss Lake with the family with their boat, though she said that with her changing jobs this year, they didn’t get out as much this summer.

Reading is another hobby and spending time with her children right now is important.

“I think my greatest responsibility is being a mom. That’s what God’s intent was for me,” she noted. “I guess right now I live through them, baseball and football...”

Lee said the switch to St. Mary’s has been a good match for her family. St. Mary’s is their church and she and Shane also wanted their sons to attend the school.