Dr. Noni Thomas López will be Poly’s next Head of School, Andrew Foote, Board of Trustees Chair, announced to the community in an email on January 24. Thomas López, who is currently the Head of School at the Gordon School in East Providence, Rhode Island, will not officially take the position until July 1, 2025, 18 months from now. Interim Head of School John Rankin will remain in the position through the 2024-2025 school year.
“A longtime New Yorker and a natural leader, Dr. Thomas López understands what it takes to elevate a school and uplift a community,” wrote Foote in his email. The Board voted unanimously for her appointment.
The announcement comes as a result of a months-long search for a new Head of School after Audrius Barzdukas stepped down from his position at the end of the 2022-2023 school year.
Thomas López, who has more than 30 years of experience in education and leadership within independent schools, prevailed. “I am thrilled to begin the next chapter of my professional journey at Poly Prep,” she said in a message within Foote’s email. “Not only because I am returning to a city that has played a central role in my personal story and my family history, but because I am joining a community that shares in my belief that schools should be sites of joy, intellectual engagement, belonging, and purpose.”
Thomas López had no intention of leaving her community as of the beginning of this school year, according to a message published on The Gordon School’s website the same day as Foote’s email. “This fall, however, it became clear that my extended family would be needing more attention in the coming years than I am able to provide from Rhode Island,” she wrote. “The opportunity at Poly came into my view this winter and offered me a chance to continue my work as a school leader at Poly, an exceptional institution whose mission aligns with my own, while allowing me to be in the ideal position to navigate some new familial realities.” She informed the Gordon Board of Directors of her departure two days before the announcement.
“There are moments when I wish I could start the job tomorrow and moments when I am grateful for the year and half to thoughtfully transition into my new role,” wrote Thomas López in an email to the Polygon. “There are days I am excited by the idea of being back in the city, back in Brooklyn, closer to my family and friends. And there are other days where I feel very sad to be leaving Gordon. This place and the people here mean a lot to me.”
Thomas López went to middle and high school at Greensboro Day School (GDS) in North Carolina, according to her 2019 profile on the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) website. There, she recalls not having any teachers of color. “As an African-American and Puerto Rican girl, I felt isolated and self-conscious quite often, but I still had no doubt that I belonged at GDS,” she said in the profile. “I have my teachers to thank for this, specifically for the way they engaged me on both a personal and intellectual level.”
After getting a BA in English from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, she found herself on the other side of the desk at GDS, despite not expecting to have a career in teaching. “I was immediately interested in the ways the school attended to the needs of culturally diverse students. I wanted to use my experience to create an environment where all students of color felt they belonged.” She also taught at the Ravenscroft School in North Carolina.
Thomas López went on to get an MA in Education Leadership from Columbia University, with a concentration in Private School Leadership, and an Ed.D in Educational and Organizational Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania, according to Foote’s email.
Next, Thomas López spent 20 years in teaching and leadership positions at independent schools in New York City, primarily involved with middle schoolers. She taught middle school humanities at Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School (LREI) for 8 years, served as the Middle School Director at the Calhoun School for 2 years, and was the Head of Middle School at the Nightingale-Bamford School for 5 years. From 2014 to 2018, she was the Assistant Head of School for Teaching and Learning at Ethical Culture Fieldston School. She also serves on the Board of the NAIS along with several other local, regional, and national boards, according to Gordon’s website. Thomas López has lived in several Brooklyn neighborhoods, and her husband was born and raised in The Bronx.
“As I got to know the school, I was struck by its diversity and how deeply people love Poly and want the best for this community,” said Thomas López in her email to The Polygon. “There is a sense that Poly has something important to contribute, not just to current and future students and families but something to contribute to Brooklyn and beyond.”
The Search Process
After Barzdukas stepped down, a group of the Board of Directors formed an initial committee to interview and select an educational search firm—a consulting company that helps independent schools find and hire administrative leaders—according to Laurie Rosenblatt, Co-Chair of the Search Committee and Vice-Chair of the Board. They landed on Carney Sandoe and Associates, “based on their reputation and 40 year history of placing successful heads of schools,” said Rosenblatt in an email to the Polygon, highlighting that they came highly recommended by peer schools. “Carney Sandoe also had the most experience working with and placing diverse candidates in the position of HOS (head of school),” she added.
Meanwhile, Foote appointed Rosenblatt and Robin Bramwell-Stewart as co-chairs of the Search Committee, who chose five faculty members and five trustees to form the group over the summer. Having faculty members on a search committee is not typical. Nonetheless, “it’s important when you are undertaking these kinds of efforts to make sure that everyone in the community has a chance to have their perspectives heard and to have their input into the process,” said Bramwell-Stewart, a Poly graduate, former Poly parent, and former trustee. Each member of the committee, whose job it is to present a recommendation of a candidate for the Head of School position to the Board of Directors, was part of the Poly community in multiple different ways.
This search process was intentionally distinct from the process that selected Barzdukas before his start in 2016. “I remember sensing that it wasn’t a very effective search process, [and] it was largely done behind closed doors,” recalled Harry Bernieri ’85, Poly History teacher and member of the Search Committee. “What I observed in that search process was fewer finalists, fewer sitting heads of school and, and less solicitation of actual written input from the community,” said Emily Gardiner, Chair of the Upper School Deans and member of the Search Committee. Bernieri added that in the end, it seemed like there was only one good choice, whereas this time around, the final candidates were all “extraordinary.”
Bramwell-Stewart, who was on the Barzdukas Search Committee, said they also used a consultant and did have faculty on the committee. “I think that at the time we were in a point of a lot of transition. We didn’t have a lot of time to think about how we wanted to best move forward,” she said, adding that that recent experience led to a better process this time around. The process aimed to follow NAIS’ Principles of Good Practice: Head Searches, which highlights the factors of a successful consultant-committee-school relationship.
The Board and the Search Committee individually participated in ‘diversity training’, where they discussed and addressed their own implicit biases in order to assure a standardized, fair process.
Over the summer, the Head of School Search page on Poly’s website went live, and in late August, the Search Committee met with Carney Sandoe for the first time. In September, Carney Sandoe representatives spent two days on both campuses and held Zoom meetings for community members to share their input. In total, they met with more than 330 individuals, according to Rosenblatt. After their campus visit, Carney Sandoe conducted an anonymous follow-up survey within the Poly community, which yielded 875 responses. In the Search Committee’s first meeting and in all of Carney Sandoe’s meetings with community members, two primary questions were raised: What are the characteristics we are looking for in a new head of school? and, What do we see as the most pressing work for a new head of Poly?
The results of the survey, released in a graph on the website, showed that the community prioritized “leadership and management experience in independent schools” in a candidate’s professional attributes and “honest, trustworthy, and transparent” in a candidate’s personal attributes. “Academic program excellence” was valued as the community’s priority and what they wanted a head of school’s priority to be.
As for students’ hopes, “I think [they] are craving someone who communicates in a really genuine way and feels connected to the daily life of the school in a genuine way,” said Gardiner.
Carney Sandoe condensed the priorities and values they had gathered from the community into a position statement, the formal announcement/job description publicized on the search website. The position statement shared an overview of Poly, “opportunities and challenges” for the next Head of School, and desired “qualifications and personal attributes” in a candidate. The latter two were the result of Carney Sandoe’s interaction with the community.
The position statement stated that “the full-time equivalent salary range for this position is $700,000 to $900,000 … [which] is based upon, but not limited to, several factors that include years of experience, education level, and expertise.” Barzdukas received a salary of $950,828, plus $97,350 in bonuses in 2022, according to Poly’s 2022 fiscal year tax filings. Dalton’s Head of School made a total of $940,000 in 2022, Fieldston’s $1,310,000 and Horace Mann’s $2,100,000.
From more than 100 educators formal inquiries (emails or phone calls) to Carney Sandoe, 33 were asked to submit a full application, which included a cover letter, résumé, two recent writing samples (speeches, letters to community, etc.), and five professional references. Throughout November, “the Search Committee meticulously reviewed these dossiers and debated each of the candidates as a group over several discussions,” said Rosenblatt. They selected the “most promising 11 candidates and invited them for hour-long interviews with the entire Search Committee.” After those interviews, the committee selected four finalists, who toured campus, met with the Search Committee again, and met with small “representative groups of Parents Association Officers, HUGS Officers, Faculty and Staff Council Members, selected additional faculty members, Board of Governors Officers and Trustees.” Those groups spoke with committee members directly and participated in an anonymous survey. Rankin also participated in meetings with the four candidates.
“Just before winter break, the Search Committee met to deliberate and decide the best candidate for the job. The Search Committee voted unanimously in favor of recommending Dr. Thomas López to the board,” said Rosenblatt. The Board proceeded to vote unanimously in favor of her appointment.
Aiyana Parker, Grade Four Head Teacher and member of the Search Committee, said that Thomas López, “really seemed to have a deep understanding of equity.”
Poly’s Past, Present, and Future
The appointment of Thomas López comes at a time where Poly is going through change. “This might sound a little dramatic, but we’re in a bit of an identity crisis in terms of who we are,” said Head of Upper School Sarah Bates. “I call it a certain kind of identity question,” added Rankin. “What does Poly want to be? What is it going to be for itself?”
Bernieri said that a school needs a strong community in order to have a clear vision and identity. “I think the last administration really undermined the identity in some fundamental ways.” Poly is challenged with preserving its historic and traditional identity while moving forward. “The past isn’t always the model for how we should live in the future. But there are things that tie the community together … with a new vision that’s tied to the old vision in some way,” said Bernieri.
Members of the Search Committee, Rankin, and Bates tended to gravitate towards comparing Brooklyn’s diversity to that of Poly. “It’s a huge identity moment for us just to have a head of school who’s not male, just to have a head of school who doesn’t identify as white,” said Gardiner. Rosenblatt noted that they did not restrict the search to a person of color, but rather “the candidate that most embodied the characteristics our community identified were most important in a new HOS.”
In May 2023, the proposed faculty and staff union canceled its vote just 4 days before it was set to occur. “I think that for many people in our community, seeing the Board of Trustees on campus meeting with us, asking questions, and taking notes led a lot of people to feel like they might enact some real substantive changes,” History Teacher and then-union organizer AJ Blandford told the Polygon last May of why the vote was canceled. The union was asking for “[job] security, transparency, accountability, [and] equity.”
Rankin said that the administration has begun to address those issues. He added some of the union’s concerns were met simply in the change in leadership. Further, the administration met with a consultancy group and have developed “a whole new compensation scheme for the faculty that we haven’t even gotten to send out the first contracts with it yet, but so far it’s being met with a fair amount of satisfaction.”
It would be difficult, Rankin explained, for Thomas López to come into the position while Poly is still trying to figure out who it wants to be, and the administration is “still going through this compensation benefits transition [and] while we’re still trying to get these job descriptions and work.” The Position Statement said the start would be in July 2024 or 2025. Thomas López will start in 2025. “It’s almost a red flag if a sitting head of school is just ready to snap their fingers and jump ship in July,” said Gardiner.
The formal transition process between Rankin and Thomas López won’t start until the summer. At first, Rankin and Foote will meet with Thomas López, and later on a larger group will work to get her acclimated to Poly. “She has a big school to run, and so do I,” said Rankin.
Thomas López has been at Gordon since 2018. “I am grateful for the fact that this move leaves me eighteen more months with you. I’ve still got a long list of hopes for my time here, and I will need every one of these days to make those dreams for Gordon come true,” she wrote in her message to the Gordon community. “This place has changed me forever.”
But according to Bates, Foote, and Thomas López herself, she and Poly are a match. “Advancing Poly’s commitment to diversity and academic excellence is an endeavor that I do not take lightly, and it’s one that calls for the engagement of every member of the community,” she said in Foote’s email. Members of the Search Committee described her as a warm and kind person.
“Who we are now in 2024 is really different from when I arrived in 2011,” said Bates. “It’s different from when Mr. Barzdukas came in in 2016, and it’s going to be different in a few years with Dr. Thomas López coming in. All of that to say, while change can be stressful or anxiety inducing because we don’t know what the future’s going to look like, I feel really good.”