Relationships are the bedrock of great leadership.

The Bainbridge Island School District’s new assistant superintendent says it, but she also decorates accordingly.

From an old wrought-iron desk to a whimsical landscape of an open field, Erin Murphy’s office is filled with relics that promote her people.

The desk, circa 1901 or 1905, belonged to Bremerton’s Naval Avenue Elementary. Murphy bought it in a Poulsbo antique store and has carted it back and forth across the Sound for the comfort of visiting families. When adults are talking, it’s the perfect prop for kids to make believe.

The painting was a goodbye gift from one of Murphy’s teachers. The staff at Alderwood Middle School wanted Murphy to know the impact she’d made on them in her five years as principal, so, in addition to the painting, they wrote her fan mail, which they rolled into scrolls and arranged in a wire frame.

Then there are the customary family photos. The mother of two boys, ages 22 and 14, says raising happy and healthy children has been her biggest personal achievement to date.

“My personal gauge on how things are going is how my children are doing, their personal well-being in every sense of the word,” Murphy explained.

Between mom and grandma, two aunts and an uncle in the profession, Murphy was basically born to be a teacher. But she had her “aha” moment in horticulture class, where she raised poinsettias and propagated jade plants alongside lessons in cell division.

“I liked the real-world relevance, the applicability,” Murphy said. “I knew I wanted to be a teacher because I really wanted to inspire students and support them in a way where they saw the relevancy of what they were doing.”

Murphy taught science and leadership at Poulsbo Junior High for eight years, before committee work wooed her to the administrator side.

She served on the school’s middle level transition task force, science adoption committee and instructional council, all of which taught her she liked the view from the top.

With building keys came an awful commute, though Murphy was excited.

As assistant principal, she shepherded Mountlake Terrace High School in Edmonds through a massive restructuring. (In 2001, Mountlake Terrace received a four-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to organize itself into five independent academies, but just after Murphy showed up, that experiment was put to rest and she had to help dismantle the project.)

For nine years, she left her Poulsbo home at the crack of dawn, making the three-hour roundtrip journey via two cars and a ferry.

Murphy is settling into her new routine, which involves extra sleep and time for hobbies. She loves to grow dahlias and tinker in her ever-expanding vegetable garden.

She’s also an avid runner. For the last seven Junes, she’s competed in the Seattle Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon with her best friends, and this year, her husband. The rest of her weekends and evenings are dominated by soccer. The professional supporter that she is, Murphy loves going to games and watching her sons play.

As an administrator, she doesn’t get any dog days of summer. Instead, three weeks into her tenure, she’s sporting a gold-plated name tag and trying to connect. After living in Poulsbo, Murphy doesn’t have that much to learn about the island. But Frog Rock was a new discovery.

“I’ve always known Bainbridge is a strong community,” she said. “I think I’ve learned there’s connections across the island and then there are pieces that are unique and well understood by everyone who live here. I appreciate that strength of community. To me, it’s just a really beautiful thing.”