Sep 26, 2022 4 min read

When Nicole Dice was hired as the superintendent of Turkeyfoot Valley Area School District in 2020, she had no idea she was making history.

Then 35, the Uniontown woman had a pandemic to contend with when she became the youngest woman in the state to be hired as the superintendent of a school district.

It wasn’t until a chance meeting with the woman who held that designation before her that Dice learned of her youthful accomplishment. At a national conference for school superintendents in West Virginia, a woman commented on how young Dice looked, and asked her age.

When the woman told Dice she was Pennsylvania’s youngest female superintendent, Dice asked how she knew. Because, the woman said, that designation was previously hers, having been hired at age 36.

“It’s interesting to see how you’re put on a path to meet different people,” Dice said.

Her journey to the post was one that started when she was a student in the Uniontown Area School District. Inspired by her teachers, Dice said she wanted her future to be in education. She even returned to her alma mater to teach in special education after graduating from Bethany (W.Va.) College.

“I was in the Uniontown School District for about 10 years, and in that 10th year, I actually took a principal position at Turkeyfoot Valley Area School District,” Dice said.

She filled the principal’s role in both the elementary school and the high school for about three years. When Turkeyfoot’s superintendent announced his plans to retire, Dice looked at it as an opportunity to help students, faculty and staff in a new role and applied for the job.

“I like the opportunity to make things happen, whether it would be for the kids or the staff,” said Dice. “I really felt like this was a level of opportunity on a broader scale.”

She was hired for the post and got busy adjusting, as students and teachers adjusted to a new way of education during the pandemic. Dice said she embraced the challenge, and called it “an opportunity for me to grow.”

Dice is proud that, aside from state-ordered shutdowns, Turkeyfoot never fully closed throughout the pandemic.

And she’s embraced other challenges during her tenure too, saving the district money by revamping transportation routes, and preparing and implementing learning progression, which teaches students on a skill level instead of a grade level.

Along with her husband, Bill Dice, she’s also taken on personal challenges. The couple started the nonprofit Loving Daniel after their son, Daniel John died 89 minutes after his birth in 2015 from a fatal form of dwarfism known as thanatophoric dysplasia.

The organization, founded in 2016, supports families coping with the death of an infant, still birth, or miscarriage by providing Cuddle Cots to area hospitals. The cots include cooling units in baby baskets that keeps a baby’s body cool after death so that families can have more time to say goodbye.

The organization also provides books and other resources that help families go through the grief process after the loss of a child. In addition, they provide care packages and memorial ornaments in which parents can put the name or photo of their child.

“I’m just one story,” Dice said. “There are so many great people and great organizations in this county.”

At Turkeyfoot, Dice said she plans to continue forging the district ahead.

She has plans to start a learning center for students, and in October, the district will partner with Somerset County Head Start to implement a classroom for 3-year-olds so they can begin the process of acclimating to a structured school environment.

“I’m very excited for that,” she said.