WINDHAM – Windham resident Cole Moran, a senior, has been selected to receive the 2013 Principal’s Award for Windham High School, Principal Chris Howell announced last Friday.

The award, which is sponsored by the Maine Principals’ Association, is given in recognition of a high school senior’s academic achievement and citizenship.

Moran, Howell and other award winners and their principals will attend an Honors Luncheon at the Spectacular Event Center in Bangor on Saturday, April 6.

The luncheon recognizes each outstanding student with the presentation of a plaque and the awarding of five $1,000 scholarships in the names of Horace O. McGowan and Richard W. Tyler. McGowan and Tyler were former Maine principals and executive directors of the association.

The Principal’s Award is presented in more than 100 Maine public and private high schools by member-principals of the Maine Principals’ Association, a professional association that represents Maine’s school administrators.

Moran, active in student government during his time at Windham High School, was proud to be selected by Howell.

“It’s a big honor coming from the administrative team at Windham High School. I’ve had a long time to get to know them and work with them, and they’ve been really helpful to me in my high school career. And to have them honor me like that, it’s pretty cool,” he said.

Moran said he first met Howell during a game of four-square when Howell was interim principal at Manchester Elementary School and Moran was a fourth-grader. It’s a game Howell remembers as well.

“Like any elementary school principal trying to interact with kids out on the playground in the fourth grade, I played four-square with that whole group of kids,” Howell said of Moran and his fellow classmates.

In more recent years, Howell has served as principal at the high school and has dealt directly with Moran after Moran approached school officials with a plan to improve student government. Moran met with Howell and other school officials last summer to revamp the Student Council to include members from each club and activity at the school. The new body is called Student Government, and Howell partly gave the Principal’s Award to Moran for having the initiative to work with students and officials to overhaul the way students claim their voice in matters that concern them at the school.

“I sing the praises of our kids all the time but what I think set him apart were the activities and actions he’s done to mobilize kids to become active members of their schools,” Howell said. “Cole has helped to revitalize school government, has really worked hard so students have a say in the building, and has really worked hard to model good citizenship and represent his community very, very well across the state.”

Howell is referring to Moran’s participation last year in the American Legion-sponsored Boys State where he and several classmates spent a week in Augusta learning about state government. Moran excelled in that arena as well, being elected by his peers as governor of Boys State. For his role at Boys State Moran was chosen to earn an all-expenses-paid trip to Boys Nation in Washington, D.C. where he and fellow Windham student Jameson McBride – the only other student at Boys State to receive the nod to attend Boys Nation – learned about federal government and met the president in a visit to the White House.

Fresh off a busy summer learning the ropes of state and federal governments, Moran, who plans to attend law school after college, became the first student-representative to sit on the Regional School Unit 14 School Board last fall. While he can’t vote on matters, Moran does get to comment during discussion. Howell has been impressed with Moran’s participation on the board, and Moran agrees that he has learned much about the process of governing.

“It’s a great experience to have a more in-depth perspective on the decisions that are going on in the district, and it’s really interesting to see how it all doesn’t just happen, that somebody puts it together,” Moran said. “And it’s really cool to see how the community’s values are really put forth through these nine people who are on the board.”