Episode #29
Desks, Dugouts, and Degrees: Principal Cynthia Chambers on Salesian's New School Year
Salesian High School's new school year did not start in September. It started in winter, when students chose their classes and the hiring began. Steve Sallustio sits down with Principal Cynthia Chambers, the first repeat guest in the show's history, for a back to school conversation about everything that got built while the building was empty: new dugouts and a basketball court sanded down to bare wood, computer science back on the schedule with an AP course and cybersecurity, and a counseling office that added a school psychologist rather than a second counselor, someone who can test for learning challenges that went unnoticed or misdiagnosed and who is a Salesian alum himself. Enrollment grew enough that the school ordered more desks back in the spring, and they were delivered an hour before this was recorded. Chambers walks through the articulation agreements now in writing with St. Thomas Aquinas College and Dominican University, which give a student with a 3.0 a separate path to acceptance and a guaranteed scholarship at both. Then she answers as a mother instead of a principal, on her son Henry's Class of 2022 and where they have all landed: civil engineering, a master's, trade school, a year of work before deciding. Her message to students is that nobody has to have it figured out at twenty-two. Salesian High School was founded in 1920 and is an independent school within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools serving the Westchester County and Bronx areas. Learn more about Salesian High School. Keep up to date with Salesian High School! Follow us on Instagram , Facebook , YouTube , and LinkedIn
