Dwan Moore-Ross has been a cheerleader of sorts everywhere she has been, whether kicking up her heals in aqua and orange for the Miami Dolphins or kicking off a new school for the Palm Beach County School District.
The latest locale to get an infusion of Ross’ infectious energy is the newly named Saddle View Elementary School going up just outside of the Arden neighborhood near 20-Mile Bend. It’s expected to welcome more than 600 students beginning Aug. 11.
“This is going to be absolutely marvelous,” School Board Vice Chair Marcia Andrews said during the planning process. “The teachers and principal will be the best and the brightest.”
That principal is Ross, who comes to the job with high praise.
“She is super nice and a real go-getter who wants the school to be great,” said Mariella Thomas, an Arden parent who was on the school-naming committee formed by the principal. “She’s very approachable.”
The fact that Ross, a longtime Royal Palm Beach resident, is a former Dolphins cheerleader speaks to the vitality she brings to her work, Andrews said recently.
“You have to have that kind of enthusiasm… and give that kind of energy to the parents [at a new school],” she said. “Dwan Ross is an outstanding individual. She knows how to open a school.”
And Ross will have quite a school to open. Saddle View, the name chosen from 17 offered by a committee of parents and others, is 95,900 square feet over three stories on 15.6 acres. Its construction cost is approximately $45 million.
It sits next to the 1,209-acre Arden development, which began in 2017 and will eventually have 2,000 homes. The community is centered around a five-acre farm.
The school’s design is meant to capture Arden’s “agrihood” nature, including an indoor-outdoor agriculture lab with hydroponic gardens, planting beds and rainwater cisterns.
“It’s going to be gorgeous,” Ross said. “We thought the design should reflect how the community looks.”
The school also features a central administration suite, a dining and multipurpose performance space, an arts suite with an art lab, a music lab, a media center with a computing center, state-of-the-art classrooms, a faculty lounge, lesson planning areas and 175 parking places, according to details provided by the district.
Beyond the school’s physical features, Ross said she is determined to create an exciting and engaging learning environment that will include the Ron Clark Academy House System and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) eSports clubs, which will aid students in learning computer coding.
In Clark’s system, each “house” has unique properties, such as its own color, symbols, history and more. Over time, each house takes on its own values and personality driven by the culture of the students and staff within it. Through fun competitions, communication and intrapersonal skills are developed.
Nowadays, Ross is a wife and mother, and an enthusiastic cheerleader for Saddle View, but her cheerleader spirit goes all the way back to her teens at New Iberia High School in Louisiana. Her résumé, however, speaks of a hard-charging educational professional, though that wasn’t her first career.
After graduating from Southern University in Baton Rouge with an accounting degree, Ross got a job in Miami’s Brickell Avenue financial district, but she said the work didn’t suit or satisfy her. A relative suggested teaching. She got her credentials and began classroom work in Broward County. While coaching the cheerleaders at Cooper City High School, she also was performing on the Dolphins’ sidelines.
Still, neither role quite fit.
“I knew I wanted to be [a school] administrator,” said Ross, who earned a master’s degree in educational leadership from Barry University to open that door.
After moving to Palm Beach County, her career took off. For four years, Ross was assistant principal at John I. Leonard High School, then spent some time learning the ropes in the district office before becoming principal at Frontier Elementary School on 180th Avenue North in The Acreage.
“It was the very best for my first principalship,” she recalled. “It was a friendly, loving environment with a very involved community.”
In 2010, Ross opened Everglades Elementary School as its first principal. After two years, she left for a job helping to oversee all the schools in western Palm Beach County, from the western communities through to the Glades.
“We all worked together to make sure students in the Glades received an A-rated education… and the same opportunities as students on the coast,” Ross said.
After four years removed from daily school activities, Ross said she missed being with the students, teachers and parents, and in 2016 returned to Everglades Elementary as principal, until she was tapped in 2024 to open the new school near Arden.
Ross’ first chore was to begin building trust with parents through communication and inclusion in the decision-making process, such as naming the school.
“She seems to be someone who values community input,” said Thomas, who will have two children — Melanie, a rising third grader, and Max, an incoming kindergartner — attending the new school.
The Palm Beach County School Board chose the Saddle View name in February over Arden Lakes and Arthur R. Marshall, the late environmentalist whose name is also on the national wildlife refuge located south of the school.
Saddle View was a good choice since the Colts already had been picked as school mascot, Thomas said, plus it connects to the equestrian ethos of nearby Wellington.
Virtually all of the students initially attending Saddle View will be Arden youngsters being transferred from Binks Forest Elementary School in western Wellington. Binks Forest was built in 1999 with a capacity for 1,206 students. Currently, enrollment is 1,278 and was expected to top 1,400 in the near future if there was no relief.
“It looks like [Saddle View] is going to be an amazing, state-of-the-art facility,” said Thomas, though she called the move from Binks Forest “bittersweet” because of their familiarity with the school and its teachers.
To ease that blow, 17 teachers currently at Binks Forest will be moving to Saddle View, Ross noted.
On Wednesday, Ross finished an all-day set of meetings at about 6:30 p.m., her energy undimmed. She was headed home to her husband of 30 years, Grady Ross, a former Florida State linebacker and Arena Football League player. She was enthused and bubbling about how well her daughter Reagan, a junior at Palm Beach Central High School, did at a track meet.
“People feed off my energy,” Ross said. “If you exude positivity, people will follow your leadership.”
