Gerard Buckley, a former math teacher and school administrator at St. Edmund’s Preparatory School and most recently the director of admissions at Xaverian High School, is the new assistant principal at St. Mary’s High School.
Buckley, 35, joined the St. Mary’s High School administration on Aug. 5, replacing former assistant principal Richard Hoppenhauer.
“Professionally, every bullet point in this job is what I wanted to be doing,” Buckley said. “This is the last piece to complete my resume in administration, so to speak.”
Buckley, who lives in Bayside with his wife Patricia, two-year-old daughter Sophia and six-month-old son Liam, graduated from SUNY Geneseo in 2000 with a bachelor of science degree in accounting.
Buckley began his career as an accountant at Credit Suisse, but began to rethink what he wanted to do with his life after the September 11 attacks.
“In college, there was a lot of, ‘well, I’m so far in, I can’t change degrees now,’” Buckley said. “But right after 9/11, I really did some thinking and soul-searching and found some perspective.”
He said he decided to apply for an open position for a math teacher at St. Edmund Preparatory High School in Brooklyn, following in the footsteps of his mother, who was also a teacher.
Buckley described his first year at St. Edmund’s as a “baptism by fire,” because at the time, he didn’t have any prior teaching experience.
“I did this after-school program with kindergarten kids when I was in high school, but I didn’t take a single education class or anything beforehand,” Buckley said.
Buckley said David Levy, a fellow math teacher at St. Edmund’s, taught him strategies on how to present content during lectures, and IT Director Mark Amatrucola helped him professionally manage a classroom.
To build rapport with students, Buckley held regular extra help sessions, became a moderator of the school’s yearbook and coached basketball and track.
Some of the fondest memories during his career, Buckley said, took place after 2:30 p.m.
“I look at it this way, “Buckley said. “I was always going to school, I was never going to work.”
After a few years on the job, principal John Lorenzetti approached Buckley about running St. Edmund’s summer school program.
The position put Buckley in charge of the program’s budget, enrollment, disciplinary action as well as oversight on all the academic programs and making sure students performed according to New York State Regents standards.
“For the first time, I had a real passion for administration,” Buckley said. “I always swore I’d be in the classroom for my entire career, just because I’d had that passion for the back-and-forth with students.”
Just prior to the end of the 2006-07 school year, Lorenzetti approached Buckley again, this time about taking over as St. Edmund’s director of development.
To prepare for his new role, Buckley networked with officials from the developmental offices at Regis High School and took continuing professional studies courses at New York University.
Though he’d never led any fundraising operations before, Buckley raised two of the largest alumni gifts in school history, one for $80,000 and the other for $20,000.
Early in the summer of 2010, Xaverian President Bob Alesi reached out to Buckley about returning to his high school alma mater in some administrative capacity.
Alesi, who once taught Buckley math, hired him as the school’s director of admissions.
Though he had been familiar with marketing the high school to alumni, Buckley now had to market the school to future students and their parents.
Buckley’s primary goal was two-fold: to analyze why students who were accepted to Xaverian were choosing to attend other Catholic Schools, and to expand the school’s admissions process to accept the brightest students from outside the neighborhoods that typically sent its students to Xaverian.
“I’m a big believer in the idea that the moment you decide you don’t need to improve is the moment you begin to fail,” Buckley said.
Buckley found that Xavier, a rival Brooklyn all-boy’s high school, drew a large number of students from its summer Higher Achievement Program for 8th grade boys. The program focused on academic coursework and recreational activities, and similar programs had been utilized by other private schools throughout New York City.
Since Xaverian did not have a similar program, Buckley reached out to officials from Cathedral Preparatory Seminary in Queens for insight.
With the help of Xaverian registrar John Ronan, Buckley established the Xaverian Community of Emerging Leaders program in his second year as the director of development.
Mornings would focus on a diverse academic curriculum, with courses in tax preparation, graphic design and theater, while afternoons would be devoted to recreational activities.
Buckley said 30 students were expected to register for the program’s inaugural session. Sixty enrolled, and a high number continued on to the high school as students.
“We had great teachers in the program,” Buckley said. “When you have great teachers, you have a great school. That’s the bottom line.”
Buckley ran the program through this summer, just before he started at St. Mary’s.
Though the school year has just begun, Buckley said he appreciates the constant interaction between students of St. Mary’s Elementary School and those of the high school.
Buckley said he also respects the diversity of the St. Mary’s student body in both nationality and religious affiliation.
“When these students go off to college, they’re going to be with kids of different backgrounds and different faiths,” Buckley said. “At St. Mary’s, they want to be a microcosm of the real world.”
For now, Buckley is working on getting accustomed to the world of St. Mary’s.
Buckley, a member of Our Lady of Blessed Sacrament parish in Bayside, said he was glad to see so many students from the parish’s elementary school list their decision to attend St. Mary’s High School in the parish bulletin.
“In looking at another school to work at, I wanted to be part of the community where my students were from,” Buckley said. “I wanted to have a school that, in 13 years from now, I’d be proud to have my daughter Sophia at [as a student].”
