Successful high school principals know that motivating students, teachers and staff is the key to academic achievement.

But what do you do about snakes?

When you are Grant High School’s Rebecca McMurrin — recently named principal of the year by Magnet Schools of America — you wrangle that snake.

That was the situation about 12:15 p.m. Tuesday at the Valley Glen campus after a student came into the office and reported seeing a snake.

“My office manager and I went out to investigate,” Principal McMurrin told the Daily News. “The student hadn’t given any details other than it being a snake.”

The reptile had found a hiding spot under a golf cart, and when McMurrin peeked under the vehicle and saw the animal, it looked like a common gopher snake. She quickly planned her next move.

“As the snake started slithering toward the quad, I didn’t want to wait for our plant manager to be there to capture it,” she said. “I was looking around for a tool I could use.”

She spotted a “grabber” tool that the custodial staff uses to pick up trash. “It looked perfect,” she said.

“I could see by the shape of (the snake’s) head and general appearance that it wasn’t venomous — if it had been, I would have gotten a longer tool!”

Principal McMurrin said she had seen professional snake wranglers on social media capture reptiles with tools similar to the trash grabber used by the custodian.

“So I ran over and borrowed it from her. It is clearly not designed for snake wrangling because I was able to get a hold of the snake at the base of its head, but the ‘grabber’ wasn’t closing firmly enough to keep the snake secured that way.

“It kept slithering away, but I was able to secure it ultimately because the snake was much wider in the middle.”

With the help of the school office manager, McMurrin tried to get the snake into an office-sized trash can, but animal was too big, and there was nothing to cover it with afterward.

She asked for one of the large cans the school uses for recycling, and a Los Angeles School Police officer who happened to be on campus for an unrelated reason turned that can on its side and helped McMurrin guide the snake into it before turning the can upright and closing the lid.

Using Google, McMurrin and her staff determined that the animal was a Pacific gopher snake, which they relocated to an area away from the campus.

It all happened after the students had returned to their classrooms after lunch, and since one of the Grant High deans was able to capture the incident on a cell phone, it turned into a noteworthy post on Principal McMurrin’s popular Instagram account.