Linda Lo, a former member of the Bloomfield Board of Education and a long time New York City educator, is the new principal of Oak View Elementary School.
Former Bloomfield Board of Education member Linda Lo is the new principal at Oak View Elementary School.
Lo grew up in the Bronx. Her mother is from Ecuador and her father, from the Dominican Republic, and she has a brother who is a retired New York City police officer.
“Both my brother and I are public servants,” she recently told The Independent Press. “That’s because of my parents. They put education first and foremost.”
Lo practically grew up in a beauty salon, she said, because her mother was a hairdresser. Her father wore many hats, working as a deejay, driving a taxi and opening his own car service. Lo helped out there, too.
“This all instilled in me the value of hard work and to be invested in the community,” she said.
After attending kindergarten in the Bronx, she and her brother transferred to private school. She said there were times when it was tough for her parents to pay the tuition, but they somehow managed.
She attended Mother Cabrini High School, in northernmost Manhattan, and then Manhattan College, in the Bronx, where she majored in political science and sociology.
She took her masters in childhood education with bilingual extension, at Hunter College, in Manhattan.
“I was on a waiting list for law school when an uncle suggested I become a teacher,” she said, “and I loved it. My trajectory is that a school needs to give their students a quality education. That’s why I call education my calling.”
She worked 22 years in the New York City school system as a middle school teacher for 12 years, in language arts and social studies; a K-12 instructional coach for four years and then in the Central Office where she was director of curriculum instruction and professional learning. During the pandemic, her team facilitated the shift to virtual learning.
She came to New Jersey in 2011, first living in Montclair before settling in Bloomfield with her husband, Peter, and their two children, Jake, a Bloomfield High School sophomore and Zachary, a Brookdale Elementary School fifth-grader.
As a BOE member from 2015 to 2018, she got to know the district and learned about policy making and school safety, a prevalent topic of discussion at the time, especially following the February 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
“I was the board representative for Oak View and was impressed with the amount of dedication by the families supporting the classroom and school activities,” she said. “I’m grateful for the school Principal Mary DiTrani left behind.”
DiTrani retired in June.
Lo said her own goal is to build on the school’s success.
“For me, it’s always about students first,” she said. “I want to elevate the students’ voice and perspective. They come to school with cultural and linguistic backgrounds and experiences. I’m hoping to build upon these. For example, we are going to start a student council, hopefully by November.”
Lo is currently having student advisory meetings with the third- through sixth-graders. She hopes to learn from them how to best structure their Oak View experience.
“During the summer, I also invited the teachers in to share their thoughts with me,” she continued. “And there were meet and greets with the parents. It was a time to learn about the Oak View community. I learned that the parents’ first priority was concerns about security.”
Wanting the school to be more inclusive toward new students, she has homerooms eat lunch together, Monday through Thursday. This is also a security measure because, in the event of an emergency, teachers know where students are. On Friday, the students can eat lunch with their friends. Lo said the student advisory group came up with the idea for these “Friendly Fridays.”
The student advisory also suggested having a selection of books, in Little Libraries, in the school’s garden area. Lo said it will be created. She has also initiated a school newsletter which is emailed to parents.
She pointed out that Oak View has a growing population of special needs students. She said this was an opportunity to address those needs.
“We have an amazing special education staff,” she said, “and the director of special services for the district, Kellie Ramundo, has her office here.
“Historically, the school performs academically well,” she continued. “Professional learning is at the core of meeting the needs of our students.”
And every Tuesday, after students drop-off, parents are invited to have coffee and donuts with their new Oak View principal.
“It’s really important to me that community and family ties are strengthened,” Lo said.
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