But when Byerly opens the door and walks into that office, the first thing she sees is a small plaque recognizing her as Kannapolis’ Teacher of the Year in 1979.

And that’s by design.

Byerly crossed the hallway at the school system’s Denver Street offices on July 1 to succeed the retired Dr. Ed Tyson in what most would consider the culmination of a career.

But she says that small plaque represents her proudest moment and a reminder of what’s most important. That’s because, says Byerly, she is an administrator who has “the heart of a teacher.”

“I can’t remember when I didn’t want to be a teacher,” Byerly said recently, sitting at a table in the office she inherited from Tyson when he departed after nine years at the helm of the city system.

For all those nine years, Byerly was his second-in-command. And he recommended her to take his place.

“I had just seen how very capable she was and particularly how she guided our instructional program and brought it upward and onward,” he said. “She’s just done a masterful job, and that’s no easy task.”

As superintendent, Byerly said she holds teachers up as the most important part of what she calls the Kannapolis City Schools family.

“The teachers are the ones making the difference in the classrooms and in the lives of children every day,” she said. “Everybody’s important, but it’s the teacher in the classroom who helps set high expectations.”

Like many administrators in education, Byerly says she left the classroom reluctantly, and only with the belief that she could contribute to the lives and education of more children through a broader role.

She says she had the advantage of working around good administrators, and seeing their impact on education.

“I saw what they were doing, and how they made a difference in the life of the school system,” she said. “I had to think about it a long time before I took my first job in administration.”

From the window behind her desk, Byerly can see the campus of A.L. Brown High School. It was in the media center there that the Board of Education announced last fall her promotion from associate superintendent.

But her career in education extends miles beyond that place and years before that day. It is rooted in her native Alamance County, at home and in the schools where she spent years not as a teacher, but a student.

Her parents, Byerly said, believed strongly in education and expected the best from her. Though she was already a good student, they challenged her to be even better. Her teachers helped make that possible.

“I had some really outstanding teachers throughout school,” she said. “Some of my teachers are the main reason I wanted to be a teacher.”

At Western Alamance High School, Byerly was a National Honor Society member, winner of the Best-All-Around Student Award, chief cheerleader and class secretary her junior and senior years.

Working as a tutor to elementary school students at the age of 15 solidified her desire to teach. Byerly loved “seeing children learn, just their desire at a very young age to see and absorb everything in the classroom ... the joy of seeing their faces light up when they learn something new.”

Winning an N.C. Teaching Scholarship, Byerly entered Appalachian State University in Boone, where she majored in elementary education, because of the school’s reputation as having one of the best teacher’s colleges in the state.

At Appalachian, she was a dean’s list student, a member of student government and the state student legislature, and she won the Outstanding Student Teacher Award in 1970, the year she graduated.

It was at Appalachian that she met her husband, Ron, originally from Thomasville and also an educator. They now have two grown children:Bryan, an engineer, and Leah, a nurse.

After college, she began teaching at Hudson Elementary School in Caldwell County. Ron Byerly says he had no inkling then that he was married to a future superintendent of schools.

“She just enjoyed teaching elementary school,” he said. “She didn’t have aspirations to be a superintendent. That wasn’t something she was working towards.”

But she did return to school soon, continuing to teach while earning a master’s degree in education as a reading specialist at Appalachian. In 1974, she began teaching reading to at-risk students.

“I saw how important reading was as the foundation of everything we learn,” Byerly says in the confident, measured tone that many Kannapolis residents have come to know since 1976, when she began teaching at Fred L. Wilson Elementary School.

Since then, Byerly’s education and career have hurtled upwards through Kannapolis City Schools. She earned a certificate of advanced studies in school administration from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 1988 and doctorate in education from the University of North Carolina in 1990.

Meanwhile, her titles changed and responsibilities increased within the system. In 1981, she was named reading director for all schools. In 1983, she added writing and language arts and became communication skills coordinator. All subjects came under her watch in 1989 as director of instruction.

In 1992, just before hiring Tyson away from Cabarrus County Schools to take the reins in Kannapolis, the school board named Byerly assistant superintendent. Her title changed in 1997 to associate superintendent.

Along the way, she’s become deeply rooted in the community: president of the Kannapolis Rotary Club, Cabarrus Regional Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, Kannapolis History Associates member, and the list goes on.

And on the first day of July, she dropped the “associate” from her title. When she did, she became the first-ever female superintendent of Kannapolis City Schools. But that’s not a big deal, she says.

“Ireally don’t think about it until people ask me that question,” she said. “Ten to 15 years ago, it may have been a bigger issue than it is today, because there are many more opportunities today.”

Still, she hopes to be a role model to younger women, and be an example to them that “the sky’s the limit; they can be anything they want to be, do anything they want to do, if they have the drive and the desire to do it.”

Byerly’s got both, and more, Tyson said. During his tenure, the former superintendent gave Byerly much of the credit for improving student achievement throughout the system, and Byerly said that’s still the main focus.

Along with that, she takes on greater responsibility for making sure schools are safe, and for fending off the occasional talk of merging the city system with Cabarrus and Rowan county school systems.

“Our school board and our community have made it clear that they would like for our school system to remain independent,” she said.

She notes, as Tyson often did when such questions arose, that the Kannapolis system is not considered medium-sized by national standards and is larger than some county systems in the state.

She doesn’t have to answer that question, or any other for that matter. The same day Byerly became superintendent, Ron Byerly retired from his job with student services at A.L. Brown.

“When people ask me about that, I just kid with them and tell them she can’t fire me, because I already retired,” he said. He’ll continue working through the coming school year on a state plan that allows retired educators to work one additional year while receiving full retirement benefits.

With 31 years in education, Byerly could retire, too. But she doesn’t plan to do that any time soon.

“I feel like I’ve taken on a new challenge,” she said.“I love Kannapolis, I love Kannapolis City Schools, and I hope to be here a long time.”