Principals for a Day: Opening Eyes, Forging Bonds
by Sarah Elzas

On the surface, PENCIL’s Principal for a Day (PFAD) program is straightforward: bring a person from the business, entertainment or public service world to interact with a New York City public school for a day. But the results of these encounters are as complex as the people involved and the schools they encounter.

“I was totally shocked and delighted by everything I saw that day,” recounts Barbara Corcoran, founder and Chairman of the Corcoran Group, New York’s leading residential agency that makes over $2 billion in annual sales, of PS 63 in the South Bronx. Corcoran’s experience revealed to her a lot of her own stereotypes of New York City public schools, in particular ones in that area.

Her experience embodies one of the two goals of the PFAD program. “First, it gives people insight into the strengths and challenges of the public schools,” explains Ruth Cohen, PENCIL’s executive director. “When you multiply it, it has a large impact.” Over 1,000 people take part in the program that places a PFAD in every single public school whose principal does not object. The second goal is to set the scene for an ongoing relationship between the PFAD and their school.

Dr. Emlyn Koster, president and CEO of the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey, formed such a bond with Booker T. Washington Middle School in Manhattan. The school has a focus on science, a quality that Koster requested in his application. He found the respect between the students and teachers to be refreshing. “I noticed that the students were being addressed as ‘ladies and gentlemen,’” he recalls. “I felt like it was a level playing field: They were expected to be ‘ladies and gentlemen.’”

Like Corcoran, Koster was pleasantly surprised with his experience. Instead of finding discipline problems, he encountered “so many unhurried moments of individual student attention in such a dynamic daily schedule,” he wrote in a thank you letter to the principal, Lawrence Lynch.

“It struck me how difficult the principal and teachers’ roles of playing the role of not just educator, but parent, advisor and social service provider,” says Benji Baer, Vice President of Public Relations at Alliance Capital, one of the largest money management firms in New York. She was a PFAD at PS 159 in the Bronx, a bilingual school.

The principal ran a good business, she says of Frances Rosenstein. A good manager has a clear idea of responsibilities, maintains an open dialogue between management and staff, and most importantly, understands the job she is asking of her staff. “The fact that Principal Rosenstein was a teacher is an asset,” explains Baer.

Baer certainly has formed a lasting bond with PS 159. Rosenstein has come to Alliance to meet Baer’s sub-group of about 40 employees, and they all are working on establishing a regular schedule where Alliance employees will give a few days a year on a rotating schedule at PS 159, exposing students to art, music, sports—whatever skill they may have. She found that the kids did not get exposure to things outside of the reading and math curriculum, and through this collaboration she hopes to “open their eyes to the rest of the world.”

“I didn’t plan on letting the school into my heart,” says Corcoran. But she did. Russell Simmons, Chairman and CEO of Rush Communications, let the school into his heart through a different route: he was a PFAD at August Martin High School in Jamaica, Queens, his alma mater. “It was unbelievable, like walking into a time zone,” he says. Nothing had changed since he graduated in 1975. “It reminded me how great that school was. It gave me hope and reminded me that there are good schools in the city.”

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