New Buffalo Area Schools students, staff welcome two new principals for 2022-2023 year

SCHOLASTICS

New Buffalo Area Schools students, staff welcome two new principals for 2022-2023 year

Two new principals – one new to the district and one returning – greeted students at New Buffalo Area Schools on the first day of the 20222023 school year Tuesday, Sept. 6.

For Tracy Ripley, being the principal at New Buffalo High School feels like a true homecoming.

She received her bachelor’s degree in public administration from Central Michigan University, her master’s in liberal studies from Valparaiso University and her post-secondary certification in educational leadership from Central Michigan University.

She began her teaching career in Michigan City, where she taught middle school social studies. After one year there, she went on to teach in the social studies department at New Buffalo High School for 17 years.

Ripley then served as principal in the building that housed sixth through 12 graders at Eau Claire Public Schools for two years before being awarded the district level position as the director of teaching and learning.

Now, she’s returned to New Buffalo – this time, as an administrator.

“I don’t have many nerves, just this sort of warm feeling of welcome by everyone I meet…I’m just excited to see faces I’ve known for a long time and I’m excited to serve the community in this role,” she said.

Ripley also counts herself as a Bison alumnus, having attended the district from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Ripley said her goal for the year is to “listen and to learn in order to support all our teachers, our students and our parents.”

“My job as an administrator is to support the teaching staff – they’re on the front lines, they’re the ones who are educating our kids every day and so my role is to be a good listener and to learn and to step back and observe what’s going on in New Buffalo,” she said.

Ripley added that this may be the most “typical” school year a lot of students may experience in nearly two years after the coronavirus pandemic.

“So, we’re being very aware and conscientious that we have opportunities for all students and to feel belonging somewhere, whether that’s in a club, an organization or a sport - we’re just trying to open up opportunities with classes, clubs and sports so that every student that comes through our doors, they feel connected somehow to try to get us back to what we are hoping is this feeling of building a community at New Buffalo High School and that we’re all part of this New Buffalo High School Bison community,” she said.

Having spent 17 years of her teaching career in high school, Ripley said she has an affinity for that age group.

“They’re old enough to joke with you, they’re old enough to have a conversation with you and you find common interests with them – probably as much as they’re learning I’m learning from them, too because they’re highly intelligent...We don’t give them enough credit sometimes,” she said.

As principal at New Buffalo Middle School, Dan Caudle will be leading a middle school that has a relatively smaller number of students than his previous one; however, he doesn’t feel that it’ll be much of an adjustment.

Previously, he was principal at Chesterton Middle School, which was attended by seventh and eighth graders and was comprised of about 1,000 students.

Student population notwithstanding, Caudle said it was like New Buffalo with regards to the “amount of special education and the free and reduced population.”

“So now it’s sixth, seventh and eighth and we’re about 140 students so it’s a fraction of the size but it’s the same type of student, so I feel really comfortable helping teachers - going in classrooms, watching their instruction and their engagement practices and being able to have good conversations with them and then have a little bit in my experience to show them, ‘Hey, he did this too,” he said.

Originally from Dyer, Indiana, Caudle played baseball at South Suburban College before transferring to Indiana State University, where he obtained a secondary social studies degree and became licensed in sixth through 12 grades for all geography, history and government.

He spent two years teaching seventh and eighth grade at Pierce Middle School in Merrillville, Indiana, before marrying and then moving to La Porte, where he taught for seventh and eighth grade social studies for seven years at Chesterton Middle School. He then was assistant principal at South Bend Adams High School in South Bend for year before becoming principal at Barker Middle School in Michigan City, For the past four years, he’s been assistant principal at Chesterton High School.

He said that middle school students are at a “very moldable age still.”

“A high percentage of them are not yet stuck in their ways or jaded from early life, school and all of that - and I feel confident that I’m able to build relationships with this age of student so that I can really help them get through this tough time at times and prepare them for the high school, when its more cutthroat,” he said, adding that that’s when their GPAs will start to matter in terms of their lives after school.

Caudle hopes to be “very present” for the students.

“You can flip to where you don’t want to be here real quick so I want to be an advocate for our kids so they know they’re coming to a building where their principal cares about them as people…I try to get to know as many of them as I can so I can say ‘hi’ and I can have something to spring up a conversation just to make them feel comfortable and safe here,” he said.

BY FRANCESCA SAGALA

New Buffalo High School Principal Tracy Ripley New Buffalo Middle School Principal Dan Caudle