Stepping into the role of interim principal for the rest of the school year, assistant principal Mr. Panjabi was appointed the position at Galileo after former principal Mr. Avila has to step away from the school for undisclosed reasons.
Mr. Panjabi had mixed feelings about being boosted into the position of principal. He said, “I consider Mr. Avila to be a friend, I care about his future and his departure was very sudden, so it felt like it left a void here.”
Being appointed the role came as a total surprise to Mr. Panjabi, who was asked too by the assistant superintendent. He said, “I felt that maintaining some level of continuity was important for the students and for the staff, instead of having someone come in from the outside, so I decided to take the position, even though it wasn’t under the best circumstances.”
In his new position as principal, Mr. Panjabi plans to continue the projects the administrative team started under Mr. Avila. One example he gave is altering the current bell schedule for next year, since many students and staff are unhappy with it now.
Mr. Panjabi also wants the administrative team to have more collaborative discussions in the future, allowing others who aren’t on the team to help decide more things. He said, “Mr. Avila’s strength was that he had this open door policy, students coming in, teachers coming in, so once I’m able to settle into that office I’ll continue that.”
It’s currently uncertain if this change will be long-term, Mr. Panjabi is currently just appointed for the spring semester. If Mr. Panjabi ends up keeping the role for a long period of time, he has some changes he’d like to implement. One of these changes would be addressing the current issue of the English-only parent emails. “We need to have a service where if there’s regular communication that it gets translated into Chinese or Spanish. I sent the email out yesterday announcing my appointment, and several parents wrote back to me saying it would be good to have things translated or things where staff members can talk in the language that families come in with.”
While this has been a sudden change, Mr. Panjabi wanted to relay this message to Galileo he said, “I come in with an open heart and mind, I want students to feel like they can come talk to me and express any concerns or raise questions for improvement and I’m ready and willing to learn and listen, I don’t assume that as a leader, even though traditionally in this country the leader is seen as having all the answers and the vision, I don’t assume that, I have a vision yes but I don’t have all the answers, so I think it’s really important to get answers from students, staff members, families on moving this school forward.”
