Niceville Principal Amy Meyer vividly recalls one of the most formative moments in her educational career. A student walked into Amy Meyer’s ninth-grade algebra class at Niceville High School looked familiar, but it took her a moment to place them.
Years earlier, when Meyer was a young teacher at Valparaiso Elementary, they’d been one of the students in her varying Exceptional Student Education (ESE) class — kids who struggled enough that the adults around them were asking tough questions: Would they be able to handle general education classes? Would they need to be routed into a different track entirely?
At the time, hard decisions were being made much earlier than they are now. Meyer and her colleagues were under pressure to help determine which students might manage a standard curriculum and which might not. For some of those children, the odds didn’t look good.
Then, suddenly, there he was again – in her general education ninth-grade math class at Niceville High.
It stopped her cold.
“It really gave me that mindset to say: kids develop at all different rates, and all learn in different ways,” she remembered.
That experience etched itself into Meyer’s philosophy as an educator and now as Niceville High School’s new principal: you never give up on kids. You don’t lock them into who they are at seven, twelve, or fifteen. You keep trying different ways to reach them — and you assume they can grow.
“Don’t give up on any kids,” she said. “No matter their learning style, no matter the problems they have to overcome…It’s really amazing what they can accomplish.”
Coming Home to “Her” School
For Meyer, taking the helm at Niceville isn’t just a promotion — it’s a homecoming.
She graduated from Niceville in 1990 and later returned as a teacher and FCA sponsor before serving as principal of Destin Elementary School, coming back now as principal feels less like a career move and more like a return to family.
“Obviously, this is my school,” she said. “I left here to go to Destin, and when I left, it was very emotional, because I love this place… I knew that one day I would be back.”
Niceville High has long prided itself on its high performance in academics, athletics, and the arts. Those tweaks start with the environment students and staff walk into every day.
“We have a very good history of tradition of excellence at this school that I just want to continue,” she explained. “Just little tweaks… You make your home your own. I want to make this my own.”
Fresh Paint, Fresh Pride
One of Meyer’s first moves is simple: Paint.
Hallways are being repainted to brighten the building. Wall graphics are going up. Landscaping out front is being refreshed. The cafeteria is undergoing a full renovation.
That might sound cosmetic, but Meyer insists it’s not. She believes the way a school looks affects how students treat it — and how they feel inside it.
“I think when it looks nice and feels nice, the students take better care of it and have more pride,” she noted.
Her goal is for anyone walking on campus — parents, students, community members, visiting teams — to buy into the school’s mission and identity immediately.
“I want our school to be welcoming and safe and a fun place to be,” she said. “When they walk on campus to go, wow, this is Niceville.”
Coach and Connector
Ask Meyer how she sees her role, and she doesn’t start with test scores or discipline. She starts with support.
“I’m here to support the teachers and the staff to help them support the students as best as they can,” she said. “I’m first an academic leader. I’ve got to be in the classrooms and see what’s going on, and give support, and use my experience to help lead other people to be able to teach as well as they can.”
She says Niceville’s faculty already has a strong reputation, and recent scores have continued to climb.
“We’re looking at scores from last year coming in,” Meyer noted. “It continues to improve every year… because we have a really good staff of educators.”
She believes the next level of growth will come from providing teachers with more structured opportunities to learn from one another.
“If somebody is falling short or needing some support, it’s in this building,” she said. “It’s just giving them the time to communicate and work together… putting those kinds of people together so they can support each other.”
Meyer wants to design that into the schedule — not leave it to chance.
Excellence
Niceville may be known for big Friday nights and state-title memories, but Meyer’s concept of excellence stretches far beyond the end zone or the report card.
“We’re not only growing kids in the academics, the arts, and the athletics, but as a person,” she said. “We want to teach them how to be kind, how to communicate well, how to work with others… When they go out into the world after high school, they’ve got to be able to have conversations and be critical thinkers and work with a team.”
That means rethinking what happens in classrooms. The old model of a teacher lecturing from the front of the room while students sit silently just doesn’t cut it anymore.
“We used to have teachers sit in front of the classroom and just lecture and talk to kids. Can’t do that anymore. That’s not how they’re going to work. It’s not how they’re going to learn,” Meyer said.
Instead, she stresses:
- Collaborative learning
- Problem-solving with real stamina and grit
- Opportunities for students to work as part of a team
Technology — including AI — is part of that picture, but it’s not the whole story.
“There are a lot of tools now we have with AI and that kind of stuff,” Meyer said. “We have to make sure we can use those appropriately and teach them [that they] can’t just rely on that, but they can use that as a tool… that’s what they’re going to have in their life when they leave high school.”
Her bottom line is simple – she wants to make “good humans.”
Holding a community together – competing with alternative education models
Niceville’s student body has hovered around 2,000 students for years, but how those students attend school has changed.
With dual enrollment, online classes, and collegiate programs, a significant number of upperclassmen now spend part — or even most — of their days away from the NHS campus. That, Meyer believes, subtly erodes the sense of a unified class.
“They have such a smorgasbord to pick from,” she said. “Sometimes… especially junior and senior year, where they don’t have quite as many classes here, I think it makes for the class to not be quite as cohesive as if they’re here all day together.”
She’s already been talking with the student government about how to fix that.
“That’s their goal,” Meyer said of the rising seniors. “What can we do to make that class a little more cohesive, and what kind of activities and things can we do to pull everybody to school to do together?”
At the same time, she recognizes that today’s students are more connected beyond their home school than ever before — through social media, travel teams, and countywide friendships.
“They can connect with other people so much more easily,” she noted. “We couldn’t connect with anyone outside of Niceville… but they have friends at all different schools, which is cool.”
Her task is to ensure that, as those wider connections grow, Niceville High still feels like home — the place where students want to be, not just where they have to be.
“If we can keep them here, we have a better opportunity to impact them,” she said. “They build a better bond with the school and with the people that they’re here with.”
Changes
Meyer is stepping into a role long held by former principal Charlie Marello, someone she not only worked under but grew up with.
“Obviously, Charlie’s done a great job over his time here,” she said. “Charlie and I grew up together, so we have a long history.”
“I’ve already called him this morning,” she added with a laugh.
She’s grateful for the chance to follow Marello in the seat as the Head Eagle, but she’s not interested in maintaining the current situation for the A-rated School. Her emphasis is on ongoing improvement and open conversation.
“There’s always room for improvement. I want to be open to conversations,” she said. “If people have concerns or ideas, I want them to feel free to come to me.”
Her longer-term goal is simple but ambitious:
To ensure that Niceville High remains the community’s school — a place longtime locals and newly arrived families are equally proud to claim.
“This is our community school,” Meyer said. “I want people in Niceville to want to come to Niceville High School and be proud of it and work together to make it even better… I want [new people] to feel just as welcome as somebody who’s grown up here their whole life.”
Back in that ninth-grade algebra class, watching a former elementary student prove the doubters wrong, Meyer found a guiding principle that hasn’t left her.
At Niceville High School, as long as she’s in charge, students won’t be written off because of how they start.
They’ll be seen for what they might become.
