English 
WilliamWoodsNews 
Fulton, MO – Lisa Nieuwenhuizen, Ph.D., a doctoral faculty member in the School of Education at William Woods University, has co-authored a peer-reviewed case study examining how a Midwestern superintendent navigated public backlash over LGBTQ+ representation in schools. The chapter, “LGBTQ+ Representation in Schools: A Superintendent’s Experience Navigating Public Backlash,” appears in Problems of Practice (Nicole V. Schilling & Nathan S. Schilling, Eds., 2026), a volume published by Emerald Publishing Limited.
Co-authored with Peter Stiepleman, retired superintendent of Columbia Public Schools and host of the leadership podcast An Imperfect Leader, the chapter traces a real conflict that unfolded when a student-led Gay-Straight Alliance club displayed celebrity-themed posters for LGBTQ+ History Month at a Columbia, Missouri middle school. The posters sparked parental complaints, social media backlash, and accusations that the district was circumventing state opt-out laws for sex education, putting the superintendent at the center of a highly public dispute over consent, curriculum, and student identity.
“This case captures something a lot of school leaders are living through right now, the collision between a district’s commitment to inclusion and a vocal segment of the community that experiences that same commitment as overreach,” Nieuwenhuizen said. “We wanted to give readers an honest, on-the-ground account of how that plays out, not a sanitized version.”
Rather than treating the incident as a simple policy dispute, the chapter uses Bolman and Deal’s Four-Frame Model — Structural, Human Resources, Political, and Symbolic — to unpack the decisions the district made in real time, from conflict management and shared values statements to the eventual use of restorative practices to rebuild trust between families and the school community.
The authors argued that the case illustrates the practical demands of human-centered leadership: balancing the needs of students who created the posters, the families who objected to them, and a broader school community caught in between. The chapter closes with reflection questions designed for use in educational leadership courses and professional development settings.
Problems of Practice is aimed at current and aspiring school leaders, offering real-world case studies paired with reflection prompts and leadership frameworks for classroom and cohort-based instruction.
About the Authors
Lisa Nieuwenhuizen
Dr. Nieuwenhuizen is a scholar-practitioner, having served 32 years in public schools as a teacher and administrator and 14 years in higher education. She is an author and researcher whose research interests include social justice, equity, multicultural education, the achievement gap, teacher preparation and supervision, and professional development. She is a certified equity trainer with the National Conference for Community and Justice, where she has delivered DEI workshops and training for schools and community businesses since 2012.
Lisa teaches doctoral courses in qualitative research methods, organizational systems and change, and urban issues in school reform. She supervises the research of twenty students’ dissertations. Lisa is the founding editor of the Midwest Journal of Education, an open-access peer-reviewed journal of educational research. Lisa received the University Council for Educational Administration’s Excellence in Educational Leadership Award in 2012.
Lisa is a reviewer for the American Education Research Association SIGs Critical Examination of Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in Education and Multicultural/Multiethnic Education: Theory, Research, and Practice. Lisa is active in service to her community, including Moms Demand Action, Be The Change Volunteers, Loaves and Fishes, and Central Missouri Humane Society.
Peter Stiepleman
Dr. Stiepleman is a locally, regionally, and nationally recognized leader who uses the power of storytelling to help leaders design better systems and help make complex concepts easier to understand. Peter is a self-starting, creative leader with experience engaging with diverse communities, from the United States Embassy in Madrid, Spain, corporate insurance offices in San Francisco, multilingual, multicultural schools in Oakland, California, and the rapidly growing City of Columbia, Missouri. In 2021, Peter was awarded the Missouri Superintendent of the Year from the Missouri Association of School Administrators.
Now living in Washington State, Peter consults and coaches EdTech companies and educational leaders on making more predictably successful decisions. Additionally, Peter is the author of An Imperfect Leader: Leadership in (After) Action which introduces a human-centered leadership model and system-thinking tools to his readers. He is also the host of a weekly podcast, An Imperfect Leader: The Superintendents and Leadership Podcast. Now among the top 2.5% of podcasts globally, Peter invites leaders from across the nation to reflect on the decisions they made and the lessons they learned. The podcast aims to help improve retention rates for superintendents nationwide.
