Leo High School Principal Shaka Rawls, winner of this year’s Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Leadership, did not really need any more accolades, he said.
What the 1993 Leo graduate wanted, he said, was to continue to shine a light on the students at Leo.
Rawls received the award on May 4 after being selected from among more than 100 Illinois nominated school leaders.
“How often do we have young boys, particularly young boys on the South Side of Chicago, getting this attention?” Rawls said. “It’s really the work we are doing here with the 250 students, giving them opportunities. It’s the Black and brown boys who are so often demonized in the city of Chicago getting this light shined on them.”
Rawls, who earned a doctorate in education from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2024, has been named Chicagoan of the Year by Chicago Magazine, a Defender Man of Excellence by the Chicago Defender, Principal of the Year by the Illinois Principals Association and the Helen Dumas Excellence in Education Award by St. Sabina Parish, among others honors he has received in the past several years.
After being nominated for the Golden Apple leadership award, he said, he had to supply an extensive dossier that demonstrated his leadership skills, the enrollment trend at Leo, measures of his students’ academic achievement and more. He included 80 letters of recommendation from organizations such as the Chicago Bears, as well as the leaders of the universities and community organizations with which Leo has forged partnerships since he has been principal.
That is all in addition to the national attention Leo’s choir earned in 2025, when it made it to the finals of America’s Got Talent on NBC.
Given that, he said, he wasn’t too surprised by the award.
The best part? Hearing students talk about the honor being given to “my principal.”
“The amount of pride in the building — you would think they would be over it after last year,” Rawls said. “But they were so proud. They referred to me as ‘my principal.’ That is the biggest reward I can have in this job, that a 16- or 17-year-old refers to me with a first-person possessive pronoun, because he feels that relationship.”
Indeed, Rawls said, he spends long hours building personal relationships with all of his students, being present to speak with them during the school day and at the myriad after-school and weekend activities he attends. They talk about academics, of course, but also about anything and everything else: hopes and dreams, families, even girls.
That style of leadership extends to faculty and staff, who have created their own relationships with students and with one another.
Those relationships have formed the foundation for building Leo into a stronger school, with growing enrollment and impressive academic results.
According to the Golden Apple Foundation, Leo has a 100% college acceptance rate for seniors, the recent graduating classes have earned over $3 million in scholarships, it has a more than 90% graduation rate and has seen a 20-point increase in the ninth-grade on-track rate.
That has presented its own challenges, Rawls said. When he arrived, graduating classes were a bit more than 20 students; next year, Leo expects to welcome 90 freshmen and have a total enrollment 28 percent higher than this year. That means the school needs more of everything: furniture, computers, lab equipment.
The Golden Apple Award comes with $10,000 in prize money, $5,000 for the school and $5,000 for the individual winner. Rawls said he’ll take a short vacation, and donate the rest of his prize money back to the school. It will be only a “drop in the bucket” of what the school needs to accommodate its growing enrollment.
At the same time, he said, the government of Botswana has invited the choir to visit next fall, and Rawls wants them to be able to go, but that means finding someone to donate airline tickets.
That’s another reason, he said, he continues to put himself out there, to accept opportunities to be featured in news outlets, to make himself available for interviews, even to apply for awards. It all brings support back to the school.
“We appreciate the support of the Catholic community,” Rawls said. “And we appreciate the people who support us.”