So how is Michelle Trifunovic different than Alan Weiss?

“Well, I’m shorter,” said the petite Trifunovic, 5-foot-4. “And I’m female.”

Trifunovic took over as principal of Edmonds-Woodway High School this summer after Weiss, who was there for 11 years, retired. Some of their differences stand out right away.

Weiss was retirement age when he left, with a career behind him that spanned decades.

Trifunovic is 37. She sports a super-short hip hair cut, the color of which has ranged from white-blonde to dark brown in the two years she was the school’s assistant principal. She may dye her hair purple for Homecoming this year, she warned. (Not permanently).

She also has three young boys cared for by a stay-at-home husband in Seattle.

On a deeper level, Trifunovic’s personal style is different than her predecessor’s.

“I’m softer than Alan,” she said, adding that Weiss was direct and had an “East Coast” manner about him.

Though she may be softer, Trifunovic still speaks with a directness that’s as firm as you’d expect a high school principal’s to be. That’s tempered with wry humor and down-to-earth warmth.

“I never say anything I regret later,” she said. “But I’m not afraid to say something is a waste of our time.”

Before coming to Edmonds-Woodway in 2005 as assistant principal, Trifunovic held the same role at Bremerton High School in Bremerton.

“There was a lot of poverty, spending time helping kids keep it together,” she said.

She compared it to emergency room triage.

Coming to Edmonds-Woodway, she said, was exciting because the building is so focused on academics.

“Students are engaged: no one’s reading the newspaper,” she said.

Some wonder how the school, with its high test scores and popular advanced classes, could change under a new leader.

“There is some question of: Are we a new school now? What will we be?” Trifunovic said.

School and district staff worked hard to make Edmonds-Woodway what it is, Trifunovic said. It’s like the school’s been on a diet and has only 10 pounds of its extra weight left to lose — the hardest weight to shed, she said.

So Trifunovic will keep steering the ship in the direction it’s been going, but also has some goals of her own.

For example, she wants to reach out to bilingual parents and students. Trifunovic, who speaks Spanish, said the school’s large Latino population doesn’t always feel comfortable getting involved.

Other students also can fall through the cracks, she said.

“We’ve been doing it,” she said, referring to previous efforts to reach out to those students. “But we can improve.”

At urban schools, sometimes administrators drive to kid’s homes to pick them up, she said.

“Sometimes I’d like a van to drive around,” she said with a wry look. “You can’t take no for an answer. You have to make sure kids succeed.”

Trifunovic also wants to open online courses to more students.

Now, juniors and seniors who’ve failed a class can retake it online. But if you fail more than one class, that can add up, Trifunovic said, so it would be good to give students that chance earlier.

Trifunovic said she’s excited to take the job and help shape the school’s vision. Still, work-life balance is a challenge, as for any principal.

On Trifunovic’s computer is a picture of two of her sons, Sava, 9, and Nikola, 6, standing in a pair of their father’s sweatpants — one child per leg — looking at each other mischievously.

Their father, Caslav, is a full-time stay at home dad for the three boys, which makes her job possible, Trifunovic said.

Her workdays are intense, then she often goes home to face even more chaos, she said with a laugh. The job can easily take over your life, something Weiss warned her about, she said.

One way to deal with that is to realize you’re not doing the job alone, despite the fact that everyone is looking to you to solve problems, Trifunovic said.

“I’ll set the course, but I can’t do it alone,” she said.