KANNAPOLIS — Nancy Bartles’ stationery has two words already inscribed on it:“I Believe.”

And the new principal at Kannapolis Middle School is not about to keep that sentiment to herself.

“That will become the motto of this school,” Bartles said recently. “Iwant kids to say ‘I believe ...’ They can fill in the blanks after that.”

Kannapolis City Schools officials believe Kannapolis Middle landed a winner in Bartles, an award-winning educator and administrator who helped turn around one of Charlotte’s worst-performing schools.

“She was going to be a principal either in Charlotte-Mecklenburg or somewhere else,” Superintendent Dr. Ed Tyson said.“We learned about her track record ... and we decided we’d like it to be here rather than in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.”

Bartles officially took her post June 1. She succeeds retired principal Ron Honbarrier, who stayed on for several weeks to help Bartles navigate her new surroundings.

“He really served as a mentor to me,”Bartles said. “When things came up, I just was able to turn to him.”

Now the helm belongs to her. And along with a staff that includes two new assistant principals — one also an award-winner from Charlotte — she plans to sail straight for success come Aug. 7, the first day of school.

Sitting in her office with white concrete-block walls, spare but for a few pictures, a plaque, a certificate and a collage of family photos, Bartles fairly oozes confidence and enthusiasm.

Even when asked about Kannapolis Middle’s recent performance on state-mandated testing — the school didn’t meet expectations last year and isn’t expected to this year — she neither flinches nor misses a beat.

“We will make expected growth this year,” she said.

Within three years, she says, the school will be one of the best in the city and in the state. And while test scores are part of that — “Nobody wants their children to go to a school that has not met standards” — there’s more.

The best schools teach the value of character, hard work and team work, she said. And they are nurturing places, safe and clean.

Much of that is being addressed this summer, and Bartles’ enthusiasm only increases when she leaves her office and guides a tour of the changes taking place at Kannapolis Middle.

Above all is academics, and this year students and teachers will be spending more time together every day working on academics in a modified block schedule.

Students will be in core subjects for 90 minutes each day, including year-long English and math classes. Science and social studies classes will be 90 minutes also, but will change each semester.

Bartles said reading, writing and doing math lay the foundation for everything else, and she intends to see to it that students learn those skills in all classes.

Teachers can do that by tailoring education to fit the ways different students learn and by making their instruction relevant in real-world terms. And given 90 minutes a day, they should be able to do both, Bartles said.

“I’m not going to be one bit thrilled if Icome into a classroom and see a teacher just standing at the front of the room lecturing,” she said. “You have to get students involved.”

She said she’ll spend a good portion of her staff development money to bring in experts in teaching practices who will bolster her staff’s abilities.

But before teachers can teach, Bartles said, students must know what’s expected of them. And they’ll be told that the first day of school, everything from academics and behavior to procedures for going to the bathroom.

They’ll be doing it in somewhat different surroundings.

The old, spotted gray carpet is gone in several hallways, exposing yellow glue and concrete. It will be replaced.

Workers pruned trees in the courtyard recently and Bartles said a partnership with the PTA will “spruce it up.”

And the rest of the school is getting a general scrubbing.

“We’ve done a bunch of cleaning,”Bartles said. “We’ve done a lot of reorganizing, cleaning and just getting the facility where it needs to be.”

One of Bartles’ challenges will be having enough space. Student population growth has forced the system to park two mobile classrooms outside for the first time, while a facilities task force looks at future needs that could include expansion or a new middle school.

Meanwhile, Bartles isn’t wasting a nook or a cranny. Cleaning out storage spaces has been a priority. “We’ve unstored a lot of things,” she said.

One of those former storage spaces, a large one which used to be where students ate until the system added a new wing with a spiffy new cafeteria, is getting yet another lease on life as a “career center.”

It has a row of computers where students will take tech classes and practice for the state’s computer proficiency test. There’s ample shelf space for displays about different careers.

And there’s plenty of room for students to sit and listen to visiting business leaders in an elective class.

Another storage area on the eighth-grade wing has been cleaned out to make room for an assistant principal to set up shop. The three assistant principals, each assigned to a grade, have offices in their respective wings, along with guidance counselors, to get them closer to students.

Bartles knows the importance of that, having just been an assistant principal herself. But her former boss at Ranson Middle, Principal Fred Slade, said she was more like a “co-principal” than assistant.

Bartles headed instruction at Ranson, and instituted block scheduling there, as well. After being low-performing in previous years, the school attained exemplary status under the state’s ABCs of Education plan last year.

“She was able to take her visions and transform them to reality,”Slade said. “I feel like she could run just about anything from kindergarten up to junior college.”

And when the time came for her to leave, he said, he thought she should “spread her talent out. To think any other way would be unappreciative of what she had helped me do at this school.”

Bartles said she’s happy to be in Kannapolis, where she has the opportunity to affect every middle-school-aged child in the city.

“I was very much intrigued about coming to a place ... where all the kids in the city come to the same school and then cross the street to the high school,” she said. “That’s really an advantage, because we can build on what the other does.”

The school is only a 30-minute drive from the Union County home she shares with her husband, Carl — a teacher and football coach — and son Brett, who’s in high school. Two children, Shannon and Chad, are grown.

Before going to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg system, Bartles worked in the Union County School System from 1972 to 1987. She has a bachelor’s degree from Appalachian State University and master’s degrees from UNC Charlotte and Winthrop University.

She was named the Professional Educator of the Year by the UNC Charlotte Department of Educational Administration, Research, and Technology, and Teacher of the Year for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

Bartles said she loved teaching, but felt she could better help other educators meet the challenges facing them, especially under the state’s accountability guidelines, as an administrator.

And as an assistant principal, and now a principal, she could spread her brand of education to more children.

She tells children that nobody loves them more than their parents, she said. And home is the most important place for them to be encouraged.

But it’s not the only place, and Bartles believes that home, church and school must work together. She said she aims to make sure that school stays part of equation.

“Somebody has to believe in you,”she said. “Somebody has to believe you can become anything you want.”