St. John XXIII Names New Principal

Marie Lippe has been hired to serve as the next principal of St. John XXIII Catholic School in Port Washington. Effective July 1, Lippe will succeed Kristine Klein, who has accepted an offer to become the middle school principal of Notre Dame School of Milwaukee.

While the principal role will be new to Lippe, she is very familiar with St. John XXIII Catholic School, having served as a teacher there from August 2015 through June 2023. This past year, she has been a professor of education at Concordia University Wisconsin, but with Klein’s resignation, she felt called to return to St. John XXIII to take on an even greater leadership role.

Lippe brings a wealth of early childhood, elementary and middle level educational experience, having served as a preschool, kindergarten, first grade and fourth grade teacher, along with teaching fifth through eighth grade English language arts. Moreover, she served as St. John XXIII Catholic School’s dean of students from 2017-23. In addition, she has extensive experience as a literacy coach and new teacher mentor.

An accomplished teacher in her own right, Lippe earned her bachelor’s degree in education through Concordia University Wisconsin in 1998, and then her master’s degree in curriculum and instruction in 2012, also at Concordia. Since then, she has furthered her professional development through conferences at the local, state, regional and national levels, with a particular focus on reading and writing instruction, literacy coaching and professional learning communities.

Lippe is sure to benefit from the strong foundation built by Klein who, through her nine-year principal tenure, has returned St. John XXIII Catholic School to fully accredited status, united formerly separate elementary and middle school programs onto one campus, enabled the St. John XXIII Catholic School community to successfully meet the extraordinary challenges brought on by the pandemic, and stemmed a longstanding decline in enrollment with a school that is now on the verge of reaching 200 students.