- December 13, 2025
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Rather than be surprised by senior pranks, West Orange High Principal Matt Turner helped make the pranks a reality.
Sometimes, he even joined in on the action.
He recalled one year the seniors wanted to have a Slip N’ Slide in the courtyard at 7 a.m. before school started. As he supervised to ensure students’ safety, he started to hear his name being chanted by all the students.
In his dress shirt, pants and tie, Turner dived to the ground, splishing and splashing his way down the Slip N’ Slide.
To Turner, his job is to help students make the most of their high school years while assisting them in excelling academically.
It’s building relationships and a positive school culture he feels permeates through the school so students can perform well academically.
After five years at the helm of Warrior Nation progressing school culture and academic excellence, Turner believes he can make a larger impact at the district level as he becomes a principal leader with Orange County Public Schools.
Turner will leave West Orange High in the coming weeks as Andrew Jackson transitions from Horizon High to West Orange as principal.
The door to Turner’s office always has been open.
Two years ago, a group of at least five freshmen girls and a boy whom Turner didn’t know before they walked through his door looking for a place to eat. They chose Turner’s office.
Since then, Turner always has welcomed students into his office at any point — whether to eat lunch, seek guidance, ask for help or anything else.
If he’s meeting with someone in his office while a student comes in, he always makes it a point to speak to the student, pausing whatever conversation he’s having at the moment unless it’s a teacher strapped for time.
“That door never shuts,” Turner said. “If that door shuts, it means something serious is going on, and kids know something’s going on because it’s always open.”
One of Turner’s missions in ensuring a positive culture at the school was giving every opportunity possible for students to be engaged at the school.
He worked with the Parent-Teacher-Student Organization to make sure funds were used to cover the cost of Homecoming or Prom tickets for those who couldn’t afford them.
Every summer, he met with club and sports leaders to get to know them and see how he could support them.
When students approached him wanting to start a club or a project at the school, his first question was, “What do you need to make it happen?” Students came to him last year asking for $400 to start a garden. He came back with, “Let’s double that and make it happen.” When the Spanish Literature Club told him it wanted to have a small Fall Festival last week, he helped them search for food trucks to bring on campus.
“We just want kids to be involved and to be heard,” Turner said. “I got into this job so I could just really get to know kids more and make sure they had a really good high school experience. … My purpose is for the kids.”
Turner uses his personal experiences as a high school and college athlete, choir member in high school, guitarist and admirer of the performing arts to connect with students of all backgrounds and support them.
“I’m just able to appreciate that all things have value,” he said. “If you want to start a club, let me know. I don’t care if there’s only 10 kids in it. Let’s get kids engaged. … I think finding the value in all these things and knowing that if we keep kids interested in something here or have an adult to connect with, they’re probably going to do better academically, but also, you only get to do high school once.”
Turner is willing to participate in any school shenanigans if it means getting students involved. He’s worn crazy costumes and even has served as a fake minister during a gaudy wedding senior prank. He had someone take a video of him roaming the empty halls of the school by himself when schools were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The video was featured on media outlets and became popular online as he became known as the loneliest principal in America.
“It’s a way to connect the kids to the school, and it gives a human element to the principal,” he said. “This West Orange community is just so fantastic.”
Seeing the students, teachers, staff, administrators and school community invested in West Orange’s success while he’s been principal has meant the world to Turner.
“It just means that kids are comfortable in the school they’re at and that’s how education should be,” he said. “It should be a partnership between the school and the kids, not necessarily the school overseeing them, making sure they’re doing what’s right. We’re not prison guards. We’re collaborators with them. It does show me that they know I care about them.”
While at the helm of West Orange, Turner has seen the school make advancements academically and culturally.
He said the school has received an “A” rating for back-to-back years and has shown a steady increase in scores for all subject areas.
He attributes the academic success to the school’s assistant principals and instructional leaders.
As for school culture, Turner said teachers meet students where they are at, and he encourages students and staff to “be curious, not judgmental.”
“The kids know they have a writ of habeas corpus with me,” said Turner, who also is an attorney. “They come in here and get a second opinion with me from whatever they want. I’m not just going to side with them because they’re coming in here, but I’ll hear their case. I think that mindset has helped shape the culture of love and care for these kids and understanding and trying to learn where they’re coming from, rather than making some decisions.”
A quality school culture leads to academic performance, he said, and a lot of that starts with teachers.
Turner also knows a successful school cannot come without support for its teachers. He wants everyone who works at the school to feel appreciated and valued, and for teachers, one way he accomplishes this is not micromanaging them. He said teachers are given the autonomy to teach how they want.
“We watch them, but if they have good results and they’re showing a lot of care for the kids, we’re not overly administrative with them or supervisory with them,” Turner said.
Leaving West Orange will be bittersweet.
Turner said after 20 years with Orange County Public Schools, five of which have been at Warrior Nation, he could have envisioned himself perfectly content staying at the school for at least another decade.
“This is a great place, but if you want to make a bigger impact, sometimes you just have to step out and do something that maybe it’s a little uncomfortable, which I think that’s where I’m at now,” he said. “It was time to take a leap and go for it, but it does make me feel good that people will miss me, and I’ll miss them, too, for sure.”
He’ll miss the day-to-day conversations with students and staff and seeing students develop and grow personally and academically from their freshman year to graduation.
Turner said he eventually would like to apply for superintendent positions, so serving as a principal leader at the district level, overseeing seven schools, will be a step in that direction. He will be able to learn about how to manage a whole district, different departments, different cultures at different schools and how to affect academic instruction at different schools.
“It’s a good first step,” he said. “I think I have a lot to offer in terms of how I view the school and the school system. I’m very student focused and student friendly, and I think a lot of principals don’t want to let go of the control. They think student friendly means we’re letting go of control, and I think you can balance that.”
His journey to becoming an attorney is one he shares to hopefully inspire students and demonstrate that hard work pays off. He knew based on his devotion to his schools and feedback from leadership that he would earn whatever educational degree he pursued, so he went another route to challenge himself. He signed up for the LSAT and passed. Before he knew it, he was accepted to Florida A&M College of Law.
“OK, I guess I’m going to law school,” he said with a laugh.
For four nights per week after working in education all day, he hit the books and attended classes himself. Unlike many law school students, Turner didn’t have a background in law. He never served as a paralegal or studied pre-law. He was starting from scratch and had to sacrifice more to earn his degree and pass the bar exam.
“I’m walking in these classes not even knowing what they’re talking about,” he said. “I have no clue what they’re even saying. Then, sure enough, three-and-a-half years later, I was done. It was crazy.”
Many preparing for the bar exam treat it like a full-time job, studying 24/7, but Turner already had a full-time job. He was lucky to be able to take eight days off before the exam to cram.
It worked. He passed.
“It changed my life, because it just reframes how you think about things, and honestly, it’s helped me be a better principal, because it reorganizes how you think,” he said.
As a principal leader, Turner will be able to share his story with more students. He will be able to tell them how he went from being a “late bloomer” in high school — not taking Advanced Placement classes and scoring a 21 on the ACT — to progressing in his educational career and having another career path set, as well.
“It’s a testament to the fact that if a kid’s not doing well in high school, they just might not be developed yet,” he said. “And then when you really want something bad, you can really work hard and get it.”
Turner wants the schools he works with in the future to be people first, whether it’s the students or the teachers. It’s a testament to how the ability to understand people from all backgrounds can help someone learn how to navigate difficult situations, he said.
He also wants to incorporate his law degree into his future more, although he’s unsure what the future holds.
“I don’t know what my dream job would be,” he said. “I think, honestly, that’s been the reason I’ve been successful up to this point. It sounds funny, but I’m not a big dreamer. I’m more of a ‘Let’s just do the job you’re in and do it really well, and then maybe do the next job.’ … I think my dream job is whatever the next job is if I find something I really like. … I just try to do the best job I can in the moment I’m in.”
