Mustangs, our Principal is great. No, really.

Earlier this year Principal James Birch was nominated by the Utah Association of Secondary School Principals to be Utah’s High School Principal of the year for 2014.

So, when we say that Principal Birch is great, we really mean it. He’s actually the best in Utah.

The UASSP process of selection involved a lot of speaking at conferences, submitting letters of recommendation, the usual. When Principal Birch was nominated he also got to visit Washington, D.C., which was a “little intimidating.”

While in D.C. he met with a ton of interesting people, including Vice President Joe Biden, Utah’s Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) and Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah).

He also met and spoke with the United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, with whom he spoke about the bill E-Rate, which proposes doubling funds for education technology, from $2.5 billion to $5 billion.

Principal Birch has been in the business of education for a whopping 27 years — 15 years in the classroom and 13 years in administration. Oddly enough, when Principal Birch was in college, being the principal of a high school with 2,000+ students wasn’t his vision of endgame. He wanted to go into political science and run campaigns.

“One day I was driving by my old high school, and I saw the kids, saw the football players. I went and volunteered and changed my major a year later,” he said when asked about his change of heart.

He hasn’t regretted it since.