Thomas Edison High School Principal Eryn Warne holds her Beacons Principal of the Year 2025 award. Beacons after-school programs serve Minneapolis, St. Paul and Richfield schools. Last year Warne was also awarded the regional 2025 Yimmy, which is given to principals who help encourage band programs. (Al Zdon)
Eryn Warne exudes a kindness, consideration and a genuine interest in the people she’s dealing with.
So how does that profile fit with being a rough, tough, in-your-face high school principal?
For her, it works. “I call myself the Mohammad Ali of high school principals. I float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.”
Warne has been principal at Edison High School for the last 10 years, and this year she has been honored with not just one, but two awards for excellence.
She was named Principal of the Year by Beacons, an after-school program organization that serves Minneapolis, St. Paul and Richfield schools. And she won the 2025 Yimmy (Youth in Music), a regional award for principals who help encourage band programs.
From South Dakota to Edison
Warne spent her early years in Estelline, S.D., population 749, where her mother was a music teacher at the local school. When her dad earned his master’s degree, the family moved to St. Cloud, Minn. She went to Apollo High School.
She earned a degree in English and teaching at St. Cloud State, taught at Woodbury, and then spent two years in New York City earning her master’s degree at New York University.
Back in Minnesota, she taught English and theater at the Hopkins Main Street School of Performing Arts, a charter school. She was recruited to the Minneapolis School District and taught at the Folwell Community School, focusing on performing arts.
She got her principal license at Hamline and became the assistant principal at Edison and later the principal in 2015. She and her family were already living in Northeast before she took the Edison job.
She was the youngest principal in the Minneapolis district at that time. “Everybody called me the ‘baby principal,’ but now there’s another principal who’s younger than me.”
She said there is a strong bond between the Minneapolis principals. “We’re just super close.” This year she’s serving as head of the principals’ forum for the district.
Kudos from others
Warne’s immediate boss is Dr. Lametria Eaddy, an associate superintendent for the district. She said Warne is the epitome of a great leader. “She is well-respected among her peers, which speaks volumes to the type of leadership she displays. Principal Warne is a smart leader who makes difficult decisions without blinking an eye, as well as maintains a highly proactive approach to her work – solution-based.”
Longtime teacher at Edison, David Salzer, said Edison is lucky to have her. (Editor’s note: Salzer is a Northeaster contributor.)
“Principal Warne is unflappable. Her calm and consistency have a measurable net gain for Edison in spite of more turbulent times within the district or public education in general.
“She is also a super impressive teacher. Her personal interactions/relationships with students reveal someone who has never lost that most important gear.”
Best times, worst times
“There’s a lot of things happening in the world,” Warne said. “A lot of it is unacceptable. At Edison we try to manage our space, but for the kids it can be a pretty dark, pretty heavy place to be.
“We try to be a place where the kids feel safe, where they know we’re on their side. We try to be extra kind to each other and lend our support all the time.”
She said her best experiences at Edison have been to see students go on to reach their capabilities. “Kids can do exceptional things. They can do things in athletics, in the arts, whatever. It’s a competitive world in some ways. When I hear that one of our students has published a book or won an award, or got elected to Congress, that’s the best feeling.”
“We want to be a place where kids can succeed. We may be a little school in Minneapolis, but we can produce that kind of graduate.”
Her worst experience as a principal was in 2017. “A lot of kids were physically fighting. We’d break up one fight and another would begin. They could use their cell phones to find out where and when the fights were.”
To top it off, a TV news station did a story on the fighting at Edison. Some in the community questioned her qualifications to run a high school.
“I was really down, but an older colleague reminded me that there has always been fighting in high schools, and that it seems to come in waves.”
The solution came from the students themselves. “The kids came to me over winter break. They took in on themselves to deal with the situation with their peers. Pretty soon the fighting was over.”
It was a tough lesson for her. “I learned a lot. I learned how to endure hard things and come up on the other side.”
What does the future hold for the Principal of the Year? “My child is a student here, and everything’s on hold until he graduates,” Warne said. In the meantime, she has obtained her superintendent’s license.
“What I’d really like to do is coach principals. I’d like to support them. But I can wait.”
Right now, Edison is home. “I have the best staff of any school in the district. It’s just an awesome team. We have a great retention of teachers, and that gives us great stability.”
“We’re close to the kids. We want to see them do their best.”