Nicholas A. Bernice ’07Ed.D.: My Journey from Teacher to Superintendent

Among the many classes at St. John’s University that shaped my instructional leadership lens was Finance in Education. I was a high school science teacher and did not have much experience in school finance. That class piqued my interest in the topic, and I eventually selected it as the concept on which to base a dissertation. 

There was a moment in one of classes that I still vividly recall when the professor posited a scenario to initiate discussion. This was a traditional, no-win, Kobayashi Maru scenario. Many of the scenarios we were given challenged us to navigate the issues a school administrator may be called upon to handle, such as student needs, state requirements, employee requests, lunch minutes, parental input, and community outreach. In these scenarios, finding balance always equated to difficult decision making. 

My professor told the class, “You are in your office on a Thursday afternoon. It is budget season, and the business official walks into your office, sits down, and tells you that the district is $500,000 short for next year. Decisions need to be made.” 

The class was then tasked with making decisions based on sample information about the fictitious school district’s programs, benefit packages, contact time, and winning spirit of its many sports teams. We discussed these issues and presented our budget ideas.

Fast forward a dozen years later, and I was a first-year superintendent drafting my first budget. It wasn’t a Thursday afternoon, but it was a Tuesday morning, and the business official walked into my office, sat down, and revealed that the budget was shaping up to be more than $700,000 short for the next fiscal year.

Certainly not everything we learn sitting in class shapes up to be so coincidentally obvious. However, exercises in thinking create metacognitive processes that are required of those in leadership positions. Much of what I did in my classes was less about the assignment and much more about building mindful processes that would someday be challenged with the daily problems of education. It is this type of preparation that equipped my classmates and I to successfully take on roles in school leadership and challenge ourselves and our organizations to become better for our students.

Both former US Vice President Hubert Humphrey and, later, former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela, are both credited with stating that you can judge a culture by how it treats its most vulnerable. In the United States, a public education is a right. Children living in the US are fortunate to have complex systems to support their learning so they can become the strength of tomorrow. 

I encourage those who seek work in education to pursue their studies. We need great people who want to participate in creating a better world by teaching students and leading schools today. Education is a field built on a foundation of optimism. Teachers and school leaders generate hopeful potential with our students, a potential that will prepare them well to lead our mutually unpredictable futures.

Dr. Bernice is Superintendent of the Ringwood School District and was recently named the 2024 New Jersey Superintendent of the Year by the New Jersey Association of School Administrators.