By Matt Hoover
USD 475 Communications Coordinator
The Geary USD 475 Board of Education recently approved the hiring of Amanda Cunningham and Lisa Ledbetter to assistant principal positions within the district for the 2024-25 school year.
Cunningham will take over as an assistant principal at Seitz Elementary during the 2024-25 school year after teaching fifth grade for the Dragons this past school year. She has taught in Kansas, Indiana, Texas, Germany and Washington. Prior to her time in USD 475, Cunningham taught sixth grade English Language Arts and math intervention at Clark Pleasant Middle School in Indiana. From 2015 to 2021, Cunningham worked for Killeen ISD in Texas where she was a nominee for Teacher of the Year because of her work in the classroom teaching multiple grades at Montague Village Elementary. Other stops during her tenure included being a substitute teacher in Germany, while also working with ASB - Associated Student Body, AVID and several other programs at Kilo Middle School in Washington. Cunningham graduated from Washington State University in 2004. She later received her master’s degree from Texas State University in 2018.
Ledbetter will be an assistant principal at Junction City Middle School this fall after moving to USD 475 from Virginia where she worked as a high impact mathematics tutor at Fairfax County Public Schools in Falls Church, Va., in 2024. Prior to her time in Virginia, Ledbetter spent time at Vernon Parish School Board in Louisiana where she was an instructional coach at North Polk Elementary before transitioning to being a seventh and eighth-grade mathematics teacher and intervention coordinator during the 2022-23 school year at Leesville Junior High.
Ledbetter, who was a high school mathematics teacher at Cornerstone Christian School in San Angelo, Texas, spent time at Lake View High School in San Angelo where she was not only the math department head, but also taught Pre-AP classes and several other high school math classes from 2016 through 2019. During her tenure, Ledbetter has also taught at R.L. Turner High School in Texas and has had stops at Pansy Kidd Middle School and Bokoshe Public Schools in Oklahoma where she was the 2011-12 District Teacher of the Year.