“I had sought advice from friends who are former superintendents … and they said I should prepare myself for just the pure raw emotion of it,” she said.

“Which means that I should prepare myself for kind of a wave of support and love, which I certainly experienced, but also to mentally prepare myself for some of the kind of sharp and raw criticism that might come, and I think that’s pretty much how I’ve experienced it. But I would say that the love and support and appreciation has certainly outweighed the criticism, which has helped carry me through it.”

I asked her to recall how she viewed Madison when she came from Chicago in 2013, and what has most surprised her since.

“Has my perception of Madison changed much? Yes and no. I think that my initial perception was that it was rich with assets, right? A progressive community with countless organizations, well-positioned to support the community that they serve. I still believe that,” she said.

“But I thought maybe, coming in, that Madison had done more work to confront” the racial divide, “like really directly confronting those issues, and I think that I’ve realized … we have a lot more work to do.”