There are now two new people at the top of the Buffalo school system with the election of Mary Ruth Kapsiak to be president of the Board of Education.
Kapsiak is a long-time city schools administrator who has been president before. She was elected to replace Louis Petrucci during Monday's annual reorganization meeting.
The new president is also in charge of contract bargaining with Pamela Brown, the recently-chosen new schools superintendent whose contract is still being finalized with a July 11 goal.
Kapsiak said a priority of the board is making sure the students show up every day.
"My hope for the next couple of years that we will be able to improve our scores, that student achievement will be at the point we need it to be, and also our student attendance and to work closely with the superintendent to make certain that the duties are carried out as needs be," said Kapsiak.
That's part of the bargaining since the contract will include an evaluation process. Brown has already moved into the superintendent's office although Amber Dixon remains legally the interim superintendent.
Meeting with reporters before the reorganization session. Brown says she will be highly data-driven and will be meeting with the public to show what's working and what isn't.
"Establishing and recognizing those positive indicators that we have here in the district, those things that are going well and so I'm hoping the community will share with me what they think is going well in the district, but also to have some open and honest conversations about what's not going so well," said Brown.
The school system has an elaborate and extensive new data library of every kind of information on students and how well they are doing.
