A longtime educator in Widefield D-3 schools has been chosen to be its next leader.

The D-3 Board of Education voted to appoint current Assistant Superintendent Steffanie Howell to the upcoming vacancy during its regular meeting Thursday night. Last month, Superintendent Aaron Hoffman announced his retirement at the end of the 2025-26 school year.

Howell has spent her entire education career in the district, going back to 1999 as a student teacher at Widefield High School, where she has served as a high school basketball coach, assistant principal and principal at Sprole Junior High School.

Upon the board’s unanimous vote, Howell said that she accepts the position with “gratitude” and “profound excitement.”

“We all know there is something different about Widefield,” she said. “You feel it when you walk into our schools, you feel it on a Friday night at our games, and you feel it in a grocery store when you run into your friends or other community members.”

The other finalists interviewed by the board earlier this month were D-3’s executive director for student assessment and information systems, Megan Houtchens, and Shelmon Brown, the chief academic officer for Pendergast Elementary School District in Arizona.

During her interview earlier this month, Howell said she intends to close performance gaps, improving graduation rates with students with disabilities, and improve the district’s partnerships with Pikes Peak State College and the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. 

At the Feb. 19 meeting, Howell went on to say that expanding innovative and postsecondary opportunities for students and partnering with parents will also be priorities as superintendent.

“Widefield, we are one team,” she said. “I am ready to listen, I’m ready to lead and I’m ready to work alongside all of you.”