Schools chief can carry a tune

Being a music teacher isn’t the path an educator typically takes to become a schools superintendent, and it’s not often that a school budget review brings to mind a Mahler symphony.

But Gary Schall, 57, who became Lawrence’s superintendent on July 1, has not only the administrative background to make executive decisions, but the musical background to note the parallels between the world’s longest symphonies and his district’s fiscal plan.

“I come from an arts background, and I approach [the budget] like a Mahler symphony,” said Schall, a Woodmere resident for the past 23 years. “I pride myself on focusing on the task at hand. You have to stay focused to make the right judgment calls.”

Schall learned that disciplined concentration as a youngster in Brooklyn, when his older brother, Ira, taught him to play the drums. “He was very, very strict and didn’t let me fool around,” the superintendent said. “He was very focused on instruction.”

P.S. 193 (now also known as the Gil Hodges School) did not have the extensive music program that Lawrence now boasts, but when Schall was in fourth grade, a conservatory-trained teacher named Mr. Johnson came to the school. “His musical skills were profound,” Schall recalled, adding that Johnson was classically trained and came from a gospel music background.

At a school without a band program, Johnson organized jazz jam sessions for students such as Schall, who were learning to play instruments on their own.

His high school social studies teacher, Rowena Vrabel, a former instructor at the High School for Music and Art in Manhattan, took an interest in Schall’s musical education, and signed him up to audition for the Manhattan School of Music. His instrument was the xylophone.

“So you have those teachers that made a difference in your life, and you only want to have that kind of impact on a student’s life,” said Schall, who was taken to his first opera by Vrabel and her husband after his audition.

Schall and his wife, Debbie, who met at the Manhattan School, have been married for 31 years. “I was in the cafeteria eating a tuna fish sandwich and she was descending this beautiful staircase and it was love at first sight, for me at any rate,” Schall recounted, noting that there is “music always going on in the house.”

Theirs is also a life filled with friends who are involved in the arts, which Schall said propels his creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. As chairman of the arts department at the St. Augustine School of the Arts in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, he integrated the arts and academics, and was featured on “60 Minutes” as well as in a PBS documentary, “Something Within Me,” about the school’s program that won three awards at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival.

“These kids have the golden opportunity to learn that playing the clarinet or violin can be as important and fun as playing basketball,” Bronx resident Arthur Richardson said in a June 26, 1988, New York Times article about the school.

In 1996, two years after coming to the Lawrence district, Schall became its director of music and transformed the program, first obtaining an $18,000 grant for new uniforms as the high school pep band morphed into a marching band, whose members now, along with chorus, band, orchestra and dance team students, travel to Disney World each year to perform.

Two years later, Schall created a program that applies various learning methods to teaching dance. He and Anne Young, the district’s director of art, collaborated on what they called the Academy of Fine and Performing Arts at the high school, which offers a variety of courses in dance, music, musical theater, drama, technical theater and the fine arts.

Schall takes over the superintendent’s job after a year as deputy superintendent. The Board of Education made what he thought was a smart move by designating a year of transition between Dr. John Fitzsimons, who retired on June 30, and Schall.

“It was designed to ensure a seamless transition from Dr. Fitzsimons to Mr. Schall, and he had the benefit of being involved in the decision-making for a one-year period,” said Murray Forman, vice president of the Lawrence school board.

Schall is driven by lofty goals, including seeking ways to break the cycle of failure among at-risk students, continually enhancing programs for the district’s high achievers and uniting the area’s diverse populations.

“I would like to be able to bring this community together with a focus on the kids’ education for all students and to establish the structures needed to enhance learning for everyone,” said Schall, adding that he wants Lawrence to be the model for how a district provides education to a heterogeneous student population.

For Schall, there is no separation between his professional and home lives. And though he acknowledged that some people could be critical of that, he said he believes his connection to the community, the three-minute commute to his office and a 24/7 mindset is vital to his success.

“It’s been valuable to me living in the Five Towns,” he said. “I could not achieve what I achieved if I wasn’t so connected and involved. The best encounters are at the supermarket or when people see me on a bicycle.”

From teaching yoga to at-risk students to dispensing career advice to Lawrence graduates, Schall wants to have the kind of impact that his mentors had on him. “I want to be remembered as someone who made a difference,” he said, explaining that he seeks to connect not only with the district’s public-school students, but its private-school students as well. “One complaint is that I’m never in the office. I want to be in the schools all the time. If I could be a superintendent who’s never in the office, then I really achieved something.”