Nardin Academy in Buffalo has a new leader who formerly served. Marsha Joy Sullivan has returned as president. WBFO's senior reporter Eileen Buckley says Sullivan agreed to extend her role from interim to permanent.
“Amazingly, tremendously privileged to be in this role," explained Sullivan.
After retiring in 2014 as she dealt with health issues, Sullivan is back. She's said she is healthy and ready to led Nardin in a job she loves.
“I am gratefully healthy and in great shape, have had a couple of good years of stability in my health and so grateful," described Sullivan.
When asked what brought her back to the school, Sullivan expressed that her family was an influence, as well as being in the right place at the right time.
“So I think that my family, my husband’s and my plans to retire a couple years ago were in place—you know, you feel so comfortable about being there and then a surprise comes, a door opens right? So about halfway through that following year the board called to see if I could come back and serve as interim while they went back into a search,” she said.
Sullivan first served arrived as president in 2007. She oversees Nardin's Montessori, elementary and all-girls high school.
Sullivan initially agreed to return as interim leader after John Thomas West abruptly departed the school last February. West is a Los Angeles educator. He was hired to serve as the first male president at the school. But after seven months on the job, the school announced he was leaving, quickly ending his presidency, and described it as a 'bad fit'.
“It was clear that it was not the right experience he was looking for or the school, so this was a very amicable, professional parting," Sullivan said.
The Cleveland Avenue campus houses the middle and high school. The Montessori is located on West Ferry. Friday evening Nardin will be celebrating the grand opening of a new athletics center on Elmwood Avenue. Sullivan noted that there will be more building growth in the future.
“We can easily reinvent the space that we have to continue to have the experience be more integrated,” remarked Sullivan.
Sullivan tells WBFO News the school is strong, enrollment is on track and the high school has a 100-percent graduation rate.
