New Buffalo Schools Superintendent Pascal Mubenga may be taking 100 days to assess the state of the district, but he has not been slow to hire key leadership positions and find a consultant to develop an assistant principals academy.
The Buffalo School Board this month approved the hires of Shana Perry and Tamara Thomas as new associate superintendents of school leadership, and Mubenga expects to hire a third in the coming weeks to finalize a team of five associate superintendents.
“Whatever I want to accomplish at the school level, it trickles down to them,” Mubenga said of the associate superintendents, whose primary responsibilities include overseeing leadership in more than 10 buildings apiece. “Those are pretty much my eyes when it comes to leading or supporting those principals.”
In the cabinet, associate superintendents join 10 department chiefs and the district’s general counsel, public relations director and a specialty program officer.
Both new hires are experienced educators from the South. Perry worked last school year as assistant superintendent for the Houston Independent School District, which bills itself as the eighth-largest public district in the nation. She earned her doctorate from Oklahoma State University’s graduate school of education and was honored for her work as a principal in the state.
The majority of Thomas’ work has been in North Carolina – including for the state’s Department of Public Instruction – but Mubenga said he’s never worked directly with her. Her background includes a stint as a principal, a role assessing schools and significant work in student support systems, which Buffalo Schools has implemented over the last decade.
“You want to learn, you want to listen and at the same time you have to lead, because school is starting in two weeks,” said Pascal Mubenga, Buffalo Schools’ new superintendent.
Thomas will begin Oct. 1, while Perry requires additional certification and is slated to start Nov. 1, according to board documents. Each associate superintendent will be paid an annual salary of $157,384.
Mubenga did not have to make cuts in order to make the hires: Darlene Jesonowski, the previous chief of school leadership, retired at the end of last school year and was honored for her 32 years in the district at the September board meeting. Rafael Perez, an associate superintendent, retired in the middle of last school year, while his peer Charlene Watson plans to retire in October after 35 years.
Karen Murray and Tanika Shedrick are the two associate superintendents who will carry on from Tonja M. Williams Knight’s leadership to Mubenga’s. The new superintendent had hoped to promote a district principal to one of the associate superintendent vacancies, but interest was tepid.
New Buffalo Superintendent Pascal Mubenga explains how his background should encourage district’s students.
“It looks like they get paid more than coming to the central office,” Mubenga said. “They get overtime in buildings.”
Mubenga does not anticipate any other significant changes to his cabinet except for replacing Will Keresztes, the chief of administration retiring in January.
The new superintendent described the challenging relationship between associate superintendents and the principals with whom they work.
“You are coaching and you’re supervising as well,” Mubenga said. “You have to wear two different hats.”
Sometimes the circumstances dictate encouragement, and others demand accountability, he said.
“I’m expecting to get a lot out of that because, based on my preliminary observation of the district, we have schools that tend to do their own thing,” he said. “But we are going to be at a point where we are doing things as a school system versus ‘This is optional, I don’t want to do this.’
“My vision with our [associate superintendents] is to make sure there is going to be a uniformity of how we’re going to do business.”
Building a bench
The district has also formed a partnership with School Transformation Consultants, a North Carolina entity founded in 2022 and led by Stacy D. Stewart, Mubenga’s colleague at both of his North Carolina superintendent stops: Franklin County and Durham Public schools.
A board member and former teachers association leader in Durham reflect on how Pascal Mubenga led the North Carolina district and the manner in which he left.
The task will be for Stewart to train an assistant principals academy in Buffalo that will develop a pipeline of administrators prepared to become future district principals, associate superintendents or superintendents. Mubenga referred to the strategy as “building a bench.”
“The academy goes into the frame of succession planning, growing your own,” Stewart said Friday, “so you begin to feel the momentum from within.”
The district’s 120 assistant principals will meet monthly, from October through March, in-person with Stewart, who will travel to Buffalo. From speaking with principals, Mubenga learned greater instructional leadership skills are a need for many assistants.
A peek inside the contract that will pay new Buffalo Schools Superintendent Pascal Mubenga $285,000 per year over four years.
“Traditionally APs are responsible for buses and books and operations,” Mubenga said, “but they need to be able to provide feedback to teachers and work with data.”
Buffalo Schools has been approved to spend up to $100,000 on the consultant, which the board recommendation called a “relatively modest investment” compared to sending assistant principals out of district for professional development.
“My task is to build credibility quickly, because, of course, I’m someone from the outside, but even in this process, I will lead with humility,” said Stewart, who described her approach as “high energy.” “The goal is to partner with these principals in order to make this academy practical and of immediate use to assistant principals once they return back into the school building.”
Some of the academy sessions will be geared toward making classroom observations more effective by understanding and evaluating learning strategies.
Not only does the academy benefit the assistant principals, but Stewart expects the six sessions to bolster building leadership teams in their common goal to improve student performance.
“As a principal, you have a lot of irons in the fire,” she said, “and it’s just good to know that you have assistant principals around you who can jump in and assist to support teachers and students in the classroom.”
Ben Tsujimoto can be reached at btsujimoto@buffnews.com, at (716) 849-6927 or on Twitter at @Tsuj10.
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