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Sunset Park Prinicipal Focuses on Student Voice in Her First Year

By Nikhita Venugopal | February 8, 2015 9:30pm
 Victoria Antonini, principal of Sunset Park High School.
Victoria Antonini, principal of Sunset Park High School.
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DNAinfo/Nikhita Venugopal

SUNSET PARK — When Sunset Park High School opened in 2009, it was the voices of the students that helped “set the groundwork for the success” — and principal Victoria Antonini wasn’t going to forget that easily.

Antonini, 42, who was appointed principal of the roughly 1,300-student school last fall after serving as assistant principal, implemented “student leadership teams” in order for students to provide feedback to the faculty and organize school events.

“I think part of my job in terms of building community is not necessarily planning events — although that’s part of it sometimes — but just figuring out when to bring people together,” she said.

While the school already had a single “principal’s advisory council” of roughly 30 students, splitting the council into teams allowed more students to participate. They also host monthly meetings with Antonini, faculty and the Center for Family Life, the school’s community partner.

For nearly 40 years, the neighborhood advocated for a high school in Sunset Park. That community effort finally resulted in Sunset Park High School, which is located in a brand new building at 35th Street and Fourth Avenue, said Antonini, who lives in Kensington.

Although the high school was an “unknown entity” when it first opened in 2009, the decades of support for the school helped build trust and create a family within the institution. 

“The school is very much embraced by the community,” she said.

► How have the student leadership councils been successful so far?

One of their successes was [the students] collaborated and implemented a spirit week in the fall that was completely student-led.

I liked that they took it deeper. For example, they wanted to do something for breast cancer awareness. Yes, everyone wore pink school-wide but during their lunch period they had an awareness campaign.

► Describe the school community.

People want to be here. I think people are proud of the work that is happening in Sunset Park High School so far.

We care deeply about one another and we care deeply about student success.

► What were some of the challenges of opening the school in 2009?

We were an unknown entity. And some of what we were doing was different from what some families thought a high school should be. We don’t have tracking, we don’t have honors classes. We have one advanced placement course in Spanish.

It took us time to prove that students could still be engaged at all levels ... And that it was safe. I think that was an early challenge.

► Why was safety an early challenge?

There was a perception that the school was not safe even though that’s not entirely accurate. There was a fight in the building and word got out in the early years.

As a new high school, we only had ninth grade. There were no older students to model what high school looks like for younger students.

► How were you able to overcome that?

It was a lot of one-to-one communication, not massive auditorium assembly meetings. We send communication to the parents regularly and have an open door policy for families.

► What was it like in the initial years with such a small student body?

Anyone who was here the first year — any of our community partners, any of our founding teachers — will tell you that there were challenges, but we also knew all 300 students.

We continue to find ways to get to know students individually but we’ll never have that level of knowledge of all the students.

Everybody in the building knew every single student. They taught us what they needed. They, as much as anybody else, set the groundwork for the success of the school.

► What are you plans for the school’s future?

We are increasingly finding ways to bring in outside programs to strengthen our existing curriculum. We’ve offered for this year for the first time a computer science class after school. It was open to any student who wanted to apply.

One of the teachers applied to become part of the Urban Bar Code project, an after school club where the students go to a professional lab once a month.

People, students and staff are supported in their ideas. If you have an idea — and you have a plan for implementation — we will figure it out.