October is National Principals Month, which offers us the chance to celebrate and appreciate the inspiring principals whose vision, character, and leadership guides our schools each day.
On paper, a principal’s job might seem like a matter of numbers: managing budgets, grades, hours, test scores, rankings, and graduation rates. But in reality, a principal’s job is really a matter of people. Because without strong leadership, clear vision, and authentic care for the faculty they lead and the families they serve, the numbers they achieve are unlikely to impress or improve.
Good principals know school is not just a place where students master academic topics, but also where they chart a lifelong path of character. It’s where students first learn how to set expectations, manage their time, develop resilience, resolve conflicts, and build friendships. As the leaders of our schools, our principals’ ultimate responsibility is to model positive character for our students. They demonstrate this by the choices they make, the needs they prioritize, the behaviors they reward, and the accomplishments they celebrate. Most of all, they serve as the personal embodiment of each school’s spirit, showing every student and teacher what it means to be a member of the very special community that their school creates.
I am so grateful that Baldwin-Whitehall benefits from the leadership of our kind and caring principals who help positively shape the lives of our students each day. This month, please join me in thanking our principals — Ms. Fusco, Ms. Rader, Mr. Ross, Mr. Tomaszewski, and Ms. Wessel — and our assistant principals — Ms. Ferguson, Ms. Johnson, Mr. Peebles, Mr. Saras, Ms. Vallus, Mr. Whitfield, Ms. Wells, and Mr. Wolf — for everything they do to create safe and supportive learning environments that help our students learn, create, collaborate, grow, and thrive. I also hope we can all take home the ultimate lesson from our principals, which is that while the numbers we achieve in life are often important, what matters most of all is the character we develop and the people we become.