The Hoboken School Board has decided to strike the word “interim” off of Gerard Kiely’s title and hire the 54-year-old educator as the full-time principal of Hoboken High School (HHS). Kiely has been serving as the acting principal since August 31, when he replaced football coach Ed Stinson as the head of the school.
While the board felt it was prudent to hire a familiar face at HHS, it agreed that changes also were necessary elsewhere and voted to move three other principals.
The board voted 7-1 to move Elizabeth Falco from Connors Primary School on Monroe Street to Demarest Middle School on Garden Street. Falco has been at Connors for 14 years.
They also moved Edith Vega from Wallace Primary School on Clinton Street to Connors, and they moved former HHS principal and current Demarest Principal Charles Tortorella from Demarest to Wallace. Assistant Principal Maria Morales will also be part of the administration migration, leaving Connors to join Tortorella at Wallace.
Transition
According to the president of the school board, David Anthony, the target date for the transfers is May 15. He said that the principals have to acclimate each other to their new schools, and that they won’t move until everyone is ready to do so.
“We think in any school district, it is important to move members of the administration around from time to time,” he said Wednesday. “We want to make massive changes, so sometimes you have to have move people around on the administrative level. We’re going to win the game and are going to win the war on education and do whatever is in the best interest of the children.”
But changing the principal of a school often causes complaints from parents and students who prefer continuity. What’s the reason for the major, sudden change?
Anthony said did not elaborate on what changes are going to be under taken in the city schools, but did give some reasons for the individual personnel changes.
“[Falco] has been a principal at the Connors School for 14 years now, and that is a long time,” he said. “It’s not that she wasn’t doing a good job, but when you are at one place for a long time you tend to get comfortable. These moves will give them all new challenges and new motivations.”
In reference to Tortorella, Anthony said he is a good fit at the Wallace Primary School because he is the most senior principal in town and has been a principal at the elementary, middle and high school level. With 650 students, Wallace has the largest enrollment in the city.
Attempts we made to contact the Superintendent of Schools Patrick Gagliari and the transferred principals, but the Hoboken Public Schools were closed all week for President’s Week.
“We’ve made a lot of progress over the years,” Anthony said. “To move one, you have to move two theoretically. The high school just got a new principal also, so it’s four schools. It’s a motivational thing more than anything. Administrators stay in one place too long and they become a little stagnant. The superintendent needs to put people where their skills are best utilized.”
Anthony said that the changes are not due to the new administration in City Hall.
Kiely is the man
Kiely, a lifelong Hoboken resident and 30-plus year veteran of the Hoboken school system, is now saddled with the task of leading Hoboken’s public high school students. The soft-spoken white haired and bearded Kiely is so popular with his students that 150 of them recently signed a petition to lobby the board to hire him on full-time, before the board did so.
Kiely was the city’s director of high school curriculum, and before that, he taught math in the district for more than 20 years. He had served as supervisor of the city’s math, science and technology programs since 1988. “My vision is to effect positive changes,” he said from his office Wednesday morning. “And to use my experience to help students succeed academically, socially and emotionally.”
He added that one of his goals is to balance academics with social responsiveness. On the academics side he pointed to programs that he hopes continue to improve scores on the 11th grade High School Proficiency Test (HSPT). He helped create these programs as director of high school curriculum and hopes to continue as principal.
The plan is a multi-step process. The first step is that all 10th graders are pre-tested on the HSPT. Students who have problems must attend summer school.
The 10th graders who fail the test and then fail summer school are retained in the 10th grade. Those that make it to the 11th grade but are still struggling with the material must attend school-implemented Saturday and vacation tutoring.
Also, students who are in jeopardy are assigned school monitors to track and insure their progress. Students who are still having difficulty have their classed rescheduled into small tutoring groups, and before- and after-school tutoring are added. And the final step in the preparation is that in the month of September, a mandatory Saturday program is held for all 11th graders.
Since 1995, Hoboken 11th graders have made increases in the three areas in which students are tested: reading, math and writing. When all of the scores are totaled, Hoboken’s schools have seen a 22.8 percent increase in overall scores in the past five years, Kiely said.
In addition, the new principal added that teaching civic pride is an important part of education. “The single essential thing that we emphasize is the sharing of respect,” said Kiely. “It’s an essential part of the high school experience that students interact with each other, with teachers and the community, creating a sincere sense of pride.”
One socially responsive program that he pointed to is a fund-raiser and memorial march that the students are planning to honor and remember the Port Authority Police Officers who lost their lives Sept. 11.
Kiely added that while there are many positive things at HHS, he can’t only look through rose-colored glasses. “We still do have needs and areas where we can improve,” he said. “We must contine to improve communication with parents. When students don’t show the respect that we expect, we must be active in involving their parents in the solution.”
And while he said that there will be a learning curve, he believes that he has the experience and the staff to do a good job. “The warm reception that I have received has been touching,” he said. “We have a very able and capable staff here and I truly believe that we can make some very positive changes in these students’ lives.”