Geoffrey Per may be holding a new position at Bensalem High School this academic year, but he’s certainly not a new face in those hallways.
A proud alum, Per began his career in education at his alma mater in 2003 and held numerous positions over the next two decades. His various roles included teacher, athletic director, MTSS coordinator, assistant principal and, in April, acting principal, with Per replacing the school’s outgoing leader Frank Flanagan.
In May, during a school board meeting, Per was appointed as BHS principal, a leadership position that he’s not taking lightly as someone with a longtime love for the home of the Owls. Last week, as Per settled into his new role, he spoke with The Times about the rewarding nature of the job, how he hopes to prepare current Owls for the future and more.
Lower Bucks Times: It’s been a couple of months since it was made official, but I’d love to hear your thoughts and feelings about going from acting principal to principal.
Geoffrey Per: I’m excited. I’m excited for the opportunity to make a difference in the community that I grew up in. I don’t take that lightly. I think it’s a big deal and as a fellow resident, my kids go to these schools, so it’s kind of like practice what you preach. I think it already is a great place, but I want to continue to improve it so that our students have a great experience here at the high school and they’re prepared for the real world.
LBT: How has everything been going so far during these first few weeks?
GP: This is day 12, I think. It’s been great. The staff is amazing and the students have come in and there’s just smiles. That’s what’s cool, to see people smile in the hallway and say, “Good morning,” say, “Hello” to each other and not have students just focused on getting to the next class. It makes it a family atmosphere, a positive atmosphere. It’s really good vibes in the building.
LBT: I always enjoy hearing how people found their calling in life. At what point did you become interested in education and realize that it’s what you want to do?
GP: Great question. I tell students all the time, I still don’t know if I know what I want to do the rest of my life. So it’s OK if they’re seniors and they don’t know what they want to major in at college. I think I wanted to get into education when I first started working a program we used to have here in Bensalem called Rec Program, it was a summer program. It was really, really popular, a bunch of schools had it. I started as a counselor in high school. And then the second piece that really got me back in education was being a high school basketball coach. I realized that if I wanted to be successful, I had to be in the building with the kids. So that’s what kind of brought me back into education. It’s nice to make a difference. You feel good. It’s a rewarding job, knowing that you had a conversation with a young man or woman during the day, and just a small impact in their life and their decision-making process.
LBT: You’re an alum of the school. What about your time there as a student made such an impact that you wanted to work at BHS and stay there all these years?
GP: It’s kind of foundational in who you are, who you become, kind of where your life takes you. I was raised to give back to the community and be a part of the community. There’s just no greater joy than to give back to the community that had such a large impact on you and your life, or in my case, me and my life. So I go back to foundation. It set the foundation for who I’d become, my morals and my values, my ideas and thought process. I want to instill that in our students here.
LBT: Can you talk about when you were named acting principal? How did that come about? Was that something you put your name in the ring for, or were you approached for it?
GP: It was a combination of both. I was an assistant principal here for eight years, and when the last principal Bill Ferrara announced that he was retiring, I had the most tenure of all the assistant principals at the high school. So a lot of people said, “Oh, Geoff’s gonna apply, Geoff will be our next principal.” And to be honest with you, I didn’t really want it. I just didn’t think it was the right time in my life. I had four kids and had just started a new job for the district, I was doing MTSS and I was really enjoying it, so I didn’t apply. And a lot of my friends and some of my colleagues kind of weren’t real happy with me for not applying.
And then when Mr. Flanagan announced that he was going back closer to home, it just seemed like it was a better fit. My kids were older, I have no more kids in elementary school. I have two kids in high school, two in middle school. My wife’s back at work, she stayed home to raise our kids for 15 years and sacrificed herself. So it just felt like the timing was right for me and my family. I think some of the same people asked me would I be interested again, and I reached out to Dr. [Sam] Lee and said, “Listen, I don’t know if I want it long-term, but if you need someone to fill in for the rest of the school year, I’d be more than happy to do it.” All the other APs had more experience outside of Bensalem, but they’re all less than five years in the district. I came in as interim and obviously I enjoyed it and put my name in the ring for the permanent job.
LBT: You said you have high schoolers. Are they at Bensalem?
GP: They are, I have a senior and a sophomore.
LBT: What was their reaction to finding out that you’d be their principal?
GP: Great question! They were super positive with me for sure. Behind closed doors they probably had some uneasiness about it. But they realize the perks, if they need money they can always go downstairs, dad’s wallet’s here, or sometimes there’s food in my office, I like to have food for teachers. But I think overall they’re OK with it. Obviously they don’t really talk to me much during the school day, I just treat them like any other student here at the high school.
LBT: Teens today, they’re learning in such a different world from when you or I went to high school. I started in 2007 and remember covering my textbooks with the brown paper. How do you balance keeping up with modern technology and other changes, but also maintaining the environment that you fell in love with as a student?
GP: One of the biggest changes, well it’s not really a change but an enforcement of an existing rule, but we eliminated cellphones in the classroom this year. I did a staff survey in June when they announced that I was principal and I asked 150 teachers for input. It was overwhelming, like 70 percent of teachers asked, “Is there anything I can do to address the cellphones in the classroom?” So I worked with the admin team this summer, and we’re really just kind of enforcing I think what’s already on the books, which is, there is no cellphones in the classroom. Students are allowed to have them in the hallways, they can have them in the cafeteria. If there’s an emergency or obviously something happens and they communicate with the teacher, they can have them. We’re human, we have lives.
But overall, I’d say 95 percent of the time, there’s zero cellphones and earbuds in the classroom. The teachers obviously rally behind it, they’re really excited. To be honest with you, there’s been no pushback from the kids. I kind of thought I’d get some parent phone calls or from senior leaders, “Mr. Per we want to talk to you, you just took away cellphones, that’s our best friend,” but I’ve had nothing. I don’t want to jinx it by talking about it right now, but no students have visited me, no students have complained. The mindset was, we’re just being a parent. As a parent, sometimes you’ve gotta do what’s best for your kid. These kids cannot not look at their phone, it’s in their pocket, they have to look at their phone all the time. But we have it eliminated so that they can actually learn from the teacher and get that human interaction piece.
The other component is, we’re trying to teach these kids communication skills and people skills. How many times have you gone to a restaurant, and you just see married couples or teenagers on their cellphones at the restaurant table? We don’t even know how to talk to one another anymore. It’s a life skill, and it’s really just a tough-love thing. We’re taking phones away, we’re doing it because we care about you, and want you to learn and be successful in life. It’s not a punishment. It’s to help you. But we’re not keeping your phone locked up somewhere all day. You can have your phone, you’re a young adult. You can have it in the hallway, you can have it in the bathroom, you can have it in the cafeteria, but you can’t have it in the classroom. In the classroom, it needs to be put away all the time.
LBT: Would you say their reliance on cellphones, has that carried over from COVID? Or is that just kind of how things are now?
GP: I think it’s a combination. COVID taught these kids how to learn on a computer, and we’d be sitting here lying if we didn’t say that ChatGPT isn’t the next big thing in education. I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t use ChatGPT. The resources are out there. I was a former social studies teacher, and now, memorizing dates for what? They can look it up at any time. So it is trying to balance that we can be more efficient and more effective, and kids do like technology, but also having that balance of, they still need to learn the old school how to have a conversation, how to construct an argument, how to develop an essay, how to formulate a thought process.
LBT: Do you have any short-term and long-term goals as principal?
GP: I don’t know if I have a short- or long-term, I just kind of have my daily goals. It’s the former basketball coach in me, we can always get better, we can always get 1 percent better each day. That’s one of my daily goals. Another is, I want the kids to be successful in life. We’re teaching these kids right now for professions that might not exist because of your previous question about technology. So instead of trying to prepare students for a job that might not exist in 10 years because of computers or AI, teaching kids critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, so that whatever professions are out there in 10, 15, 20 years, our students will be successful.
And then, it’s really not a big part of my life, but the reality is, we get measured by our test scores. I’m not a big test score guy, I don’t think it’s a true measure of our students. But with that being said, people look at data, so I do want to prove our math and our ELA and our state Keystone test scores. But that’s not ever going to be my first focus, that’s going to be a byproduct of all the other good things we’re doing here at the high school.
LBT: Was there anything additional that you’d like our readers to know?
GP: Obviously I love Bensalem. I think it’s a great place to raise your family and it’s an outstanding school. There are some really great teachers here that make such a big impact. I used to run Student of the Month as assistant principal and I always share with parents, we only have your child for four years. So we’re just one small piece of an impact on your child’s life. They’re gonna have elementary teachers, middle school teachers, college professors. I do believe it’s a whole village approach. We’re one piece of that village, and we’re just trying to do the best we can to make a positive impact on the students.
Samantha Bambino can be reached at sbambino@newspapermediagroup.com
