Depp wrote a newspaper column for the Glasgow Times for several years using the pen name "Ora Ethel" and frequently used the opportunity to promote Cherry's school.

Here, they are placed under the best teachers that can be secured anywhere, and are carried through a thorough course of drawing out, until they, like the iron ore after it has been sheltered, heated and drawn out again and again, becomes the finest wrought steel.

We know she went reluctantly and felt she was underpaid because of the letter she sent to Henry Hardin Cherry, then president of the Western Kentucky State Normal School, and a supporter of women's rights.

How would you like to one child and care for it and train it for twenty days for fifty or sixty cents, say nothing of a whole community of them at the same low rate?

Kentucky's compulsory attendance law requiring parents to send their children to school were loosely enforced.

Recognizing Depp as a popular educator armed with a degree, both the Democratic and Republican Party committees viewed her as a highly qualified candidate.

Now, to make this plain to my friends, some of whom will be disappointed in my not accepting the nomination, I will say, that when I came home from Bowling Green from school last June and found you so eager for me to run for superintendent, I told you that I would come out if you would show me that the county was strong enough to elect me on a clean independent ticket.

While becoming superintendent in her native Barren County may have been in her mind, it was overshadowed by the fact that her brother, Oren R. Depp, planned to seek the nomination in the next election cycle.

[22] In the August Primary Election of 1913, Depp was confirmed as the Barren County Democratic Party's nominee.

[29][30] Taking office on January 1, 1914, Depp took on the challenge of overseeing nearly 100 segregated community school districts within Barren County, directing curricula, managing teachers and their professional development, constructing and maintaining facilities, poor roads, managing resources, and public relations.

In her biennial report to the Kentucky Superintendent of Public Instruction for 1915, Depp shared successes and areas needing improvement in Barren County Schools.

Depp clearly worried about how best to serve children in those families when she reported: "We need some new [school] houses for colored children, as this population moves from place to place so rapidly that we need to put these [school] houses on wheels to keep up with the yearly moving.

"[31] Depp highlighted her expectations of teachers as well as the curricula taught:"We are endeavoring to make our institutes progressive and helpful.

We are anxious that our teachers come for a deeper motive than to show their new clothes, and the most of them have put their 'shoulders to the wheel,' and are striving to make our institutes all that they should be.

We are also trying to stress language and reading in such a way that innocent childhood will not always have to suffer on account of improper teaching along these lines of work.

She added that consolidation was under consideration as the area because "the country is level and the roads good, and as there are a number of small schools nearby, I believe this would be a big step in the right way.

She explained that Barren County's Judge opined that the law was weak and didn't produce the anticipated results.

Superintendent, I hope this part of that law will be looked after in our next meeting of the General Assembly, and that we will, in the future, be able to reach every dilatory parent in the county, whether he votes for us again or not.

"[31]Depp's greatest accomplishment of the biennium was orchestrating the creation of Barren County's first four-year high school.

Depp viewed the empty facility as ideal for a high school and negotiated a deal to lease the property.

In her usual modest demeanor, she continued, "We feel that we have done nothing brilliant, nothing to boast of; we have simply been hunting for the right way and for the best methods, and as we have found them, we have gladly adopted them.

"[32] Depp reported that she had succeeded in establishing a uniform curriculum used throughout Barren County's public schools.

"The Course of Study is no longer a shelf book, it has become a daily hand-book of useful information that the teacher know better than to leave out of his work," Depp explained.

Depp lamented that due to Young being called to service in the U.S. Army, the progress of the clubs was greatly handicapped in 1917.

The still-new four-year high school operating in the former facilities of Liberty College had grown rapidly from 70 students to 106 in 1916.

Depp concluded her final report, stating, "During the four years we have been able to meet debts amounting to $19,000 and we are justly proud that we can hand over the office keys to Mr. W.M.

Depp was a featured historical figure in the South Central Kentucky Cultural Center's annual event, Harvest of History, in September 2013.

Elaine Alexander Richardson, a retired educator and former member of the Glasgow Independent School Board, portrayed Depp.

[43] A seven-and-a-half-foot bronze statue by Amanda Matthews, Depp's great-great niece, was approved for display in the Kentucky Capitol.

While Nettie's influence was not statewide, the Historic Properties Advisory Commission considered her a representative example of Kentucky women who achieved professional and personal success.