Kasandra D. Nelson, Ed.D.

Vici Elementary School
Vici Public Schools
Vici, Oklahoma
knelson@vicischools.k12.ok.us

Kasandra Nelson measures the impact of her leadership by the strength of her relationships with teachers, students, families, and colleagues. As principal of Vici Elementary School for the past 14 years, Nelson has leveraged her relationship-building acumen to increase and diversify the support that students receive throughout their educational journey. One of Nelson’s primary areas of focus during her tenure has been to enhance student safety on Vici’s campus, which is shared with the district’s junior high and high school. In an ongoing process of collaboration with stakeholders and her administrative colleagues, Nelson has overseen a range of efforts to modernize the campus, including the installation of self-locking doors to reduce public access to the building, improvements to visitor identification and security during pick-up and drop-off hours, and the recruitment of a school resource officer to assist with high-volume visitor hours. Nelson has also initiated and sustained numerous partnerships to fill critical resource gaps and engage community members to enrich the quality of education at Vici. Consistently active in her professional organizations, Nelson deeply values the opportunity to build her leadership skills in community with other administrators across the state and country. She holds an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from Southern Nazarene University and an M.Ed. in Education and Administrative Leadership and a B.S. in Education from Southwestern Oklahoma State University.