“That Kid from Nebraska”: Jason Strong’s Journey to Superintendent
When Jason Strong first called the Richmond County School Board office in 2003, no one could have known just how long his relationship with Richmond County Public Schools would last. At the time, Strong was a college student in Nebraska, finishing his degree and looking for his first teaching job. Richmond County had posted an anticipated English vacancy online, and Strong was interested.
Very interested.
He called the school board office every week for about four weeks, checking to see if the position had officially opened. Each time, Susan Johns answered the phone. Years later, Johns told Strong that she would tell then-superintendent Mr. Luttrell, “That kid from Nebraska is calling again.” She even had a bobble head custom made for Strong when he got his doctorate that says, “Kid from Nebraska.”
Eventually, the anticipated vacancy became an actual one. Strong flew to Virginia for an interview, was offered the job, and that summer he and his new wife, Becky, packed up their lives in Nebraska and headed east.
Twenty-four years later, that persistent “kid from Nebraska” is the superintendent of Richmond County Public Schools.
Strong grew up in Wood River, Nebraska, a small town in the Platte River Valley that he describes simply as “corn and cows.” He graduated in a class of 44 and remembers a community where everyone gathered at Friday night football games and the school served as a centerpiece of community life.
He attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where he met Becky, who had also grown up in a small Nebraska community. The two married in May 2003, the same year Strong graduated with his English teaching degree. Ready for an adventure, they decided to look beyond Nebraska for whatever came next.
And Strong looked far beyond Nebraska. He applied for teaching positions in New York, Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Virginia, and even Alaska. But something about Richmond County caught his attention.
“It was close to the water. It was close to the city, but it looked far enough away from the city that it still kind of had a small-town identity,” he said.
That identity turned out to feel surprisingly familiar.
Strong began his career at Rappahannock High School teaching 10th-grade English and helping coach football. After one year, he moved to eighth-grade English, where he taught for seven years. From there, he became assistant principal at the high school, serving in that role for four years before becoming principal of Richmond County Elementary-Middle School in 2015.
After seven years as principal, Strong spent three years at the Chesapeake Bay Governor’s School before returning to the division office as assistant superintendent. This year, he stepped into the role of superintendent.
Although his positions have changed over the years, one thing has remained remarkably constant: his belief that relationships are the most important part of education and leadership.
“The more friendships we made, the more things we found to love about this place,” Strong said. “It just kind of felt like vines slowly grew around us.”
Those roots eventually became deep ones. Becky now works in payroll for Richmond County Public Schools and as financial officer for the Northern Neck Regional Special Education Program. Their 12-year-old son, Oscar, has grown up here. And Strong, who once thought he had left small-town life behind, has discovered that it suits him after all.
Sometimes, he jokes, Oscar gets frustrated when a quick trip to the grocery store becomes anything but quick because his dad knows so many people.
That connection to people is more than a side effect of living in a small town. It is central to the way Strong approaches education and leadership.
“Relationships are the most important thing to me as a teacher, as an educator, as a person,” he said.
Strong traces some of that philosophy back to his own years in the classroom. As a teacher, he learned that relationships with students were often the key to reaching and motivating them. As an administrator, that same principle has shaped the way he works with teachers, staff, families, and the larger community.
He also credits mentors throughout his career with preparing him for each new role. As an assistant principal, he worked under Jesse Boyd, now superintendent of King George County Schools. Strong watched the way Boyd was always the first one to school each day and learned from him how to get out in front of things by not hesitating when a need arose.
Former Richmond County Superintendent Greg Smith became another important mentor, offering leadership coaching while modeling how to have difficult conversations and confront challenges all while maintaining collegiality and professionalism.
Later, former Superintendent Trey Davis encouraged Strong to move to the Governor’s School to diversify his leadership experience and continued nudging him toward new opportunities.
Strong continued his own education along the way, earning a master's degree in school leadership from Virginia Commonwealth University and a doctorate from William & Mary. But he says becoming an administrator was not a carefully mapped-out plan from the beginning. Instead, he has tried to remain open to what might come next while being intentional about the opportunities in front of him.
“I don't think there's any chance at that moment in time that I would have thought, I'll be superintendent here one day at all,” he said of his younger self.
One of the things Strong values most about leading a small school division is the ability to truly know the people who make it work. Pointing to a photograph of the entire Richmond County Public Schools staff, he noted that he knows every person pictured by first and last name.
That closeness also gives him a unique view of the school system as a whole—how one decision affects another and how teachers, administrators, staff, students, families and community partners all fit together.
Strong is particularly proud of Richmond County Public Schools' longstanding reputation for high expectations, devoted staff, and strong leadership. One of the clearest signs of that strength, he said, came during a recent convocation when former Richmond County students who had returned to teach in the division were asked to stand.
“I could not believe how many of the teachers standing had once been students,” he said.
For Strong, their decision to return says something important about the community and the school system that helped raise them.
As he looks ahead, Strong wants Richmond County Schools to continue preparing students for a changing world. He points to opportunities such as computer science and coding as examples of how the division can continue evolving its curriculum while maintaining the strong foundation already in place.
Yet for all his attention to what comes next, Strong still finds joy in one of the simplest parts of education: watching a student understand something for the first time. Even if a teacher has taught the same subject for 20 years, he said, every year brings a new group of students experiencing it for the first time.
“When the light bulb moments happen and they make a connection or figure out how to do something on their own… no matter how long you've been doing it, it's still fresh to them, and that's what makes it fresh to you.”
Outside of school, Strong has found other ways to become part of the Northern Neck community. For years, he was active with the Westmoreland Players, appearing in roughly 15 to 20 productions. He also played banjo in a band made up largely of current and former teachers. These days, much of his free time revolves around Oscar, whose growing interest in hunting and fishing has sparked the same interests in his dad. Strong also enjoys watching his son play soccer and spending time with Becky and Oscar.
It is a life that would have been difficult for the 22-year-old English teacher from Nebraska to imagine when he first arrived in Richmond County.
Strong knows that superintendents often have to move from one school division to another as opportunities arise. His own path has been different. He has been able to grow from teacher to administrator to division leader within the same community that gave him his first opportunity.
“This is my home,” Strong said. “I mean, I just couldn't be any more grateful and blessed for the way that things have played out over the years.”
And as he begins this newest chapter, Strong isn't pretending that more than two decades in Richmond County means he has all the answers.
“I am not a fully polished product,” he said. “I have much to learn from everybody else, from all of our many community collaborators, and I will make mistakes along the way.”
What gives him confidence, he said, is not the belief that he will always get everything right, but rather the people surrounding him and the relationships built over 24 years.
“I walk confidently because of the people around me, and because of the support that I feel.”
Maybe that is the most special part of Strong's story. He came to Richmond County because he was looking for his first teaching job. What he found, little by little, was a career, a community, and a place to raise his family.
The boy from Nebraska kept calling. Richmond County finally answered. And somewhere along the way, it became home.