Principals of power: Meet the new leaders of J.L. Long, Woodrow Wilson

Next-door Dallas ISD schools in our neighborhood started the year with new principals.

Chandra Barnett, who was previously the principal of J.L. Long Middle School, took over at Woodrow Wilson High School. Amir Boroujerdi came from Molina High School to replace her at Long.

With a few months on campus now under their belts, we spoke with Barnett and Boroujerdi to give them a chance to introduce themselves, share their goals for the year and talk about the safety issues still fresh on the minds of many community members.

Chandra Barnett grew up in Dallas and attended Skyline High School, though she graduated from an El Paso school. She attended East Texas State University, where she earned a degree in social work.

After college, she worked at a nursing facility and the Dallas County Juvenile Department. Her mother then suggested she consider education because she liked working with children.

Barnett received master’s degrees in education administration and special education. Her first position with Dallas ISD was teaching special education students at the now-closed Pearl C. Anderson Middle School in 2002. After 11 years at Anderson, Barnett worked as an assistant principal at Lincoln High School, Billy Earl Dade Middle School and Long, and then she became principal at Long before moving next door.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO IMPROVE THE CAMPUS CLIMATE AND CULTURE?

We have different activities I do throughout the week for the teachers, for the students. I do meet with the teachers on a regular basis. We do temperature checks on a monthly or a weekly basis as we see fit. I greet them in the morning. I send them positive messages every morning. And the teachers do respond to those, and I respond back. But it’s just a two-way communication. How are you doing today? What are some of the things that you feel like I’m doing well, I’m not doing well? But the main thing that I think has changed at Woodrow, is the fact that I am in the hallways, interacting with the teachers, the students, family members. I have an open-door policy.

WHAT ARE SOME PRIORITIES FOR THE YEAR?

One of our priorities is for the safety and security of the school, inside the school and outside of the school. This summer going until the school year, I did develop a school safety plan that we put out to the community. We did create a QR code just to let the community know if something is happening within the school, we’ll send out a quick message: We’re having a practice fire drill; just to let you know, the staff and students are OK. Some of the things that did happen prior to this year that was one of the community’s biggest concerns, was the safety and security of their students while they’re at school. So that is one of our main focuses that we look at on a daily basis with our daily door checks, making sure people have ID badges when they come in and things of that nature.

HOW ELSE ARE YOU ENSURING STUDENTS AND STAFF ARE SAFE?

I do have officers that I ensure are at the park or outside of our school, whether they be regular DPD [or] Dallas ISD PD at the park across the street to ensure after school, there’s no incident. Or even a plain clothes officer that they may not see. So, we did increase some security outside of the school. And I had meetings with parents prior to the school year starting to let them know these are some of the safety measures that we have put in place within the school and out.

Amir Boroujerdi was born in Tehran, Iran, and moved to North Texas when he was 7 years old. He attended schools in Dallas, Plano and Richardson, including Dan D. Rogers Elementary, before attending the University of Texas at Austin, where he graduated with a degree in Spanish language, literature, history and culture. Boroujerdi has an MBA from Hardin-Simmons University and a master’s in educational technology leadership from Lamar University.

His first full-time job in education after college was as a Spanish teacher and a football and baseball coach at Woodrow. Since then, he’s worked in the Office of Student Discipline, the Student Services Department, at North Dallas High School as a reconnection center facilitator, at Skyline High School, Kennedy Curry Middle School and Pinkston High School as an assistant-principal intern, and at Molina High School as an assistant principal.

Fun fact: Amir Boroujerdi is trilingual; he can speak Persian (also called Farsi), English and Spanish.

WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO GET INTO EDUCATION?

I come from a family of professional educators. My mother was a high school principal in Iran. My father was a deputy minister of education in Iran as well. It’s just something that kind of runs in the family. My sister is currently an art teacher in Garland. I always had a passion for education, knew that I wanted to help people, and becoming an educator just seemed like a natural fit.

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR PRIORITIES THIS YEAR?

We’ve been filling some of the vacancies that we had. There’s obviously a national teacher shortage, and we’ve moved very quickly to fill all those vacancies. The second thing is always going to be just making sure that our teachers have the help and the support that they need in order to effectively instruct their students. My third big one is safety and security. We’ve got to make sure that we have a safe campus environment. We want to make sure that safety is always our No. 1 priority, working with our admin team, our security team, our campus officer, in order to make sure that the school day goes smoothly, and that the students are safe, and they feel secure, and that we can have a great school year.

HOW ARE YOU ADDRESSING SAFETY CONCERNS?

We are working very closely with the high school next door to ensure that all of our students are safe, especially since Woodrow and Long are so close to one another. We have also worked with the DISD Police and security team to review our building, review our safety protocols, make sure that we’re training our people, training our teachers, making sure that we have a strong and responsive administrative team that can respond to any kind of safety and emergency issues. Our referrals for the first five weeks of school are already about 53% less than they were the last year. So, we’re already making some progress in terms of just having a little bit more order on campus so that we have less discipline issues. We’re also tightening up our hallway transitions, making sure that students get to class on time and quickly so that they can get the maximum amount of instruction. We’re even working with our PTA to have some parent volunteers, at least in the morning during arrival, just to have a greater presence outside of our campus to make sure that the students are being adequately watched. Right now, we have teachers, we have myself, we have security out there in the mornings, but we just want more people to ensure the safety of our students.

Interviews edited for clarity and brevity.