WILMINGTON — It’s been a whirlwind past 12 months for Shelly Luckett, but she’s excited about where that journey has led.
Luckett came to St. Elizabeth School last August as the advancement director, but she pivoted to finance in December when the need arose. Earlier this summer, she was named interim principal, tasked with leading the venerable school into a new era.
Luckett had the school administrative experience to help shepherd St. Elizabeth through a restructuring. She said school leaders needed to find someone who could balance academics with finances, recruiting and everything else that comes with administration. And that needed to be done in a certain manner, she said.
“The school has gone through a lot. There’s a level of sensitivity that has to be there,” she said recently in her new office on the second floor of the school.
Luckett’s summer has been hectic, particularly with hiring new faculty members.
“It has been exciting to see the interest from educators who want to be a part of Catholic education,” she said. “I’ve really taken the time and worked with our advisory board and the staff to find the right fit.”
Her path to Wilmington has been a winding one.
A Florida native, Luckett attended high school in Atlanta, and she stayed there for college at Georgia State, earning a degree in public policy. She earned a master’s from the University of South Florida after leaving the corporate world.
She taught in a parochial school for four years in Florida before moving to the public school system. After a year teaching at her high school, she became the executive assistant to the superintendent of schools in Cobb County, Ga.
Luckett, 55, then ran a freshman academy for 800 students, and in 2013 she moved to Vietnam to run an international school. After that, she spent a year working in Bangladesh.
In 2017, she changed careers again, working with nonprofits in emergency management. Her job was to work with local organizations to help communities recover from significant disasters. She came to Delaware to visit friends, ““and the next thing I know I’m still here. I came up for a visit and stayed.”
She has learned a few things about the St. Elizabeth community in her year on Cedar Street.
“I think the most important thing is that this is a community that is resilient,” she said. “The community wants to protect its legacy. They also are committed to ensuring that the founding principles and the Benedictine values will go on for another hundred years.
“The word ‘legacy’ here is very, very important.”
Enrollment will be a priority over the next year, “but our enrollment right now is actually higher than where it was when we finished the school year. So that’s very exciting.”
Luckett wants to build on the sense of community at St. Elizabeth and rebuild trust among the school’s constituencies. She also would like to see more “synergy” between the school and the parish.
In her previous roles, Luckett was not among the students every day, but she did lead a delegation from the school to Selma, Ala., in March for the 60th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” bridge march there. She has been around the school all summer and has worked with student leaders. She said she does not consider herself an office person, so students and teachers can expect to see her around the building.
For someone who has moved as much as she has, Luckett said the fact that the St. Elizabeth community is so “anchored” is one of the things she likes the most about it.
“I love the history,” she said. “There are people in this community who are now parents, and they have kids who go here, and they live in the neighborhood and go to this parish. For me that’s important.”
“I think the other part is the spirituality. There is something very special about this school. When you bring the parish and the school together, it’s got this harmony that is waiting to get out,” she said.
Luckett lives near Smyrna with her golden retriever, Georgia. Every week, however, she and some friends drive north to their parish, which happens to be St. Elizabeth.
“There’s just something about this place,” she said.
Like any true southerner, Luckett loves college football, and she is a big minor-league baseball fan. She said she is learning the lyrics to the Philadelphia Eagles’ fight song. She is also an avid photographer.
