Meagan Sullivan is an only child who was raised in Nashville, Tennessee. After high school she studied Communication Studies at NYU. Upon graduation, she was accepted as a corps member for the newly created Teach for America and spent the next two years living and working in a small, under-resourced and understaffed school district in Arkansas as a special ed teacher.
From Arkansas, she went on to the University of Arizona (Go Wildcats!) for a masters in Special Education: Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Meagan moved to Sharyland in 2002 and now, more than 20 years later, Sharyland is still home. All five of her children attended Sharyland campuses: Hinojosa, Shimotsu, BLG and SHS. In addition to being an active, involved district parent, she was recruited as a certified Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) teacher in 2007.
Initially part-time, she soon found herself assuming more responsibilities within the district as she worked closely with all campuses to develop policy and procedures for district dyslexia assessment after receiving her CALT (Certified Academic
Language Therapy) from Southern Methodist University (SMU) in 2011.
After a decade of overseeing district dyslexia programming and assessment, and recognizing the crucial role diagnosticians play, Meagan decided to pursue educational diagnostician certification due to the shortage across Texas. She continued to work for SISD until 2021-22, when she resigned to work for a special ed co-op serving Willacy and Cameron county districts.
In addition to her involvement in Sharyland, Meagan has been actively involved for decades in her church community at St. John’s Episcopal in McAllen, having served as youth group leader, teacher, local mission trip volunteer, as well as many other roles over the years.
Meagan’s oldest son, Jacob, now lives and works in Nashville. Two daughters, Caeli and Abby, are at A&M in College Station in the schools of engineering and business, respectively. Fenn graduates from SHS in 2023 and will attend UTRGV while her youngest, Vanessa, is finishing her freshman year.
Serving on a public school board is something Meagan first started planning towards and hoping for during her TFA days in Arkansas, seeing first hand the enormous impact school boards can have on the quality of education available to a community. Believing ALL children can learn and that ALL communities deserve a high quality, accessible education embedded itself from her first teaching experiences, igniting her lifelong
journey as an involved community member and advocate for high quality public education.
Meagan’s view of education is one of social justice and equality: as a means of providing a more equitable and balanced playing field for students everywhere. |