OCEAN CITY — Dr. Christian Angelillo took over as superintendent of schools in Ocean City this summer. To give the community a better understanding of the man who will lead the education for students from Ocean City, its sending districts of Upper Township, Sea Isle City and Longport, and the nearly 200 School Choice students from throughout the area, the Sentinel sat down with Angelillo last week for a wide-ranging interview.
The Sentinel previously interviewed Dr. Angelillo in March, when the Ocean City Board of Education officially hired him, but this interview covers a broader scope of topics including his leadership style and influences, his philosophy of education, how parents should address concerns, teaching to the test, importance of extracurricular activities, changes in students and education over the years, and his expected longevity in the position.
The interview is presented in question-and-answer format.
What are some of the key things you would like students, parents, teachers and administrators to know about you?
I think that what’s important for people to realize is that first and foremost the decisions that we have to make as an administration always come with the best interests of our kids and our system at heart. Every district has a system and every administrative team has an approach. You have to show that you are approachable, that you are willing to lead by example and that you ultimately do what you say you’re going to do.
We make a lot of decisions every day and you have to remember those decisions impact ultimately on our students. When you reflect on those decisions, you want to make sure you have the best interests of kids at heart.
What is your philosophy of K-12 education?
When you think about a philosophy of education, people get caught up in what may be construed as real big-picture items. For me, at its very heart how I’ve always thought about it for students in primary grades, how are we instilling in them a love and an appreciation for learning at its foundation? Because when they have a positive experience at that level, that experience carries them into the next phases, in our case the intermediate school and high school.
And in intermediate school, how are we making those experiences educationally for our students more tangible so by the time they’re in high school learning becomes much more experiential, and that’s what truly prepares them for college and career readiness. How are we affording students opportunities that way along the road as we journey through a K-12 system together?
What kind of leader are you? Authoritarian? Micro-manager? Hands off? Putting your faith in your professionals to do their job?
I think in all honesty, it is do what you say you are going to do. I had said this to the staff at the beginning of the school year. I understand that I am in Eagles country right now, but I spoke to them about (former New England Patriots coach) Bill Belichick. Good, bad or indifferent, Bill Belichick is one of the greatest coaches of all time. Why? Sure, he had one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time in Tom Brady, but he had a very simply philosophy — do your job.
I want to be there to support our administration and staff in doing their job, but I want for them to do their job. My leadership style is one that I think is engaging. I tend to be a visible leader and sometimes when you’re in the position of superintendent you feel like you may be limited by that, but ultimately when you’re starting out in a system and you remain in a system, as I did in my previous system for nine-plus years, the community needs to know you are invested in their community, that you’re invested in their students.
I’ve always felt you start to forge relationships with people, find out what is important to them, let them know what’s important to you and that serves as the foundation catapulting districts with leadership to future success. It’s not in coming in and saying, ‘This is who I am and by the way I’m going to make wholesale changes here.’ How can you make change without understanding what the needs of the district are and what the systems are that are in place?
It’s very simple. It’s going to be based on accountability, do your job, approachability, getting people invested in what it is that we feel strongly is good for kids.
Before your master’s and Ph.D (in educational administration and supervision, and administration, respectively), you majored in history with a minor in philosophy. What was your interest in those subjects in your undergraduate work and how have they helped you?
I’ve always had this love for history that was probably fostered in me as a kid from my mother. My mother is our resident family historian. It was not only about family genealogy, she had this love and passion for history in general. Quite frankly, I always thought I would head down a different road, career-wise. When I was a freshman in college at Fordham, my father got sick, sadly, and passed away shortly thereafter. And it was people that I had that were a part of my history — coaches, teachers, people who were really mentors to me — that sort of took me under their wing during my college years and would reach out and say, ‘Hey, you had a great game, here’s a newspaper clipping.’ And they would send it off to you.
I explained to the staff here that, believe it or not, my plan was that I really wanted to be a Secret Service agent and explored an internship opportunity in Manhattan to that effect.
I had an old football coach reach out to me and say, ‘Have you ever thought about teaching?’ And I had never really thought about teaching at all. I was not trained initially as a teacher with this history degree, so I had those conversations with them and interviewed my senior year in college and was offered a position at my old high school, but it was a private Catholic high school so you didn’t have to be a certified teacher. I have gone back alternate route, but I knew that if I wanted to teach, I was only going to teach history because it was my field of study and it was a passion at the time. I coupled that with coaching. And that’s really how I started out in the profession.
Are there any philosophers whom you like?
I started more connecting with the philosophy of education and the different educational professionals there are, such as (John) Dewey, and you looked into those people and it was, ‘Wow, this is really interesting how they had the foresight to start to forecast what educational systems would look like decades and decades later.
Are there any books, authors or people of influence who have helped shape your life?
A lot of how I moved forward with my philosophy of life — I’ve read a lot of books — I believe the best learning, as I said earlier, is experiential. You learn from the people who came before us and we hope to pave the way for the people who come after us.
As a kid, and it’s going to sound cliche, but my parents had such a profound influence on me. I just saw how hard they worked to give my brothers and I everything that we had and then what they expected from us.
I’ve been very blessed along the way. After my dad passed away and my mother remarried, my stepfather has been in my life for 30 years and he has been equally influential. You learn a lot about life in general from those who have experienced life. And then you take those lessons and try to apply them as best you can to your own life. That’s really what has shaped me.
The books I love to read are the Bill O’Reilly books — “Killing Lincoln,” “Killing Jesus.” The most recent one he has come out with is “Contemplating the Presidents.” They’re really interesting. I wouldn’t say they shaped me, but I enjoy reading them because they have that slant on history.”
After so much impermanence in leadership in this district, there is a hope the superintendent position will be stable for quite some time. You have spoken in the past about your longevity in previous positions. What are your expectations here?
I think similarly. That’s how you accomplish things. You have to get to know your system, understand people, figure out what’s important and create a path that moves things forward from there. It is challenging, let’s be honest, when you’re the sixth person that has been in this seat since Kathy Taylor retired in 2021. There is a lack of stability and my hope is to be the stabilizing force here, but I believe sometimes when you don’t have that stability from the top — and that’s not to say we haven’t had leadership in our respective buildings — but when you don’t have that stability from the top, you start to think about, ‘What ultimately is the district’s expectation? Is someone new going to come in and want to change this or change that, or what is it that they’re going to do to move that system forward?’
My hope would be (a long tenure) because I’ve had longevity and so much of that longevity and success comes from forging meaningful relationships with people from the Board of Education all the way on down through everyone in your system. Having those relationships and creating that road map, if you will, for the future is what will ultimately lead everyone to a level of success everyone will be proud of, but it’s challenging when you haven’t had that stability at the top.
How do you view your relationship as superintendent with the Board of Education?
Very simply, I believe I’m that conduit of information from the schools to the board and they’re that same conduit to me back from the community. It’s sort of a symbiotic relationship where the board has governance and oversight and want to ensure the district is being run well. It’s my responsibility to do just that. To make sure the district is being run well and we have systems in place that help us get to that point.
Public comment at Board of Education meetings can get pretty intense. What value do you see in public comment at school board meetings?
I think it’s an opportunity for the public to do just that, to comment on agenda items or other items they feel strongly about, but I always believe the best work is done when you go originally to the source. A board meeting is just that. Board members don’t interact with members of the public. Rather, you’re free to give your comment and then you thank folks for their comment and then you advise them on who is the best person to speak with whatever their issue may be.
I get it. Folks are passionate about education, as they should be, but I also think it is important for people to realize there is a process and a chain of command that ultimately we expect everyone to follow. They are certainly free to comment if they so choose.
Then, if parents have an issue, you believe it is best for them to go directly to the source, such as with an issue in the classroom, the first person to talk to is the teacher?
Absolutely. That is true of anyone in any profession. If I have an issue that is related specifically to a family member that I have, I’m not going to talk to other family members about them. I’m going to deal with it directly with my family member. That’s really what we all are, if you think about it.
This is a system not unlike a family unit, but it’s an understanding that when you’re sort of at the head to the unit, you have to create an expectation — and we have them on our website, there’s a chain of command, it’s right there on the front page, follow the chain of command — but I believe wholeheartedly that’s how you can avoid issues by going directly to the source first.
What changes have you seen in students over your nearly three decades in education and what seems to have remained a constant?
One of the things that remains a constant with kids is that they always surprise you in the most wonderful ways. Students will remember things you said as a teacher or as a principal years and years later. Then when you see them and have the opportunity to speak with them, they’ll say, ‘I remember when you …’
Kids haven’t changed all that much. What’s changed is the accessibility to information that they have now. That has made education exciting, but it’s made it exponentially more challenging. They can look up everything that they need to on a device. And that’s a challenge in and of itself.
With that knowledge comes a level of responsibility that kids didn’t necessarily have to think of years ago when I was in school. When we were in school, you’d get on your bike after school and you’d ride around and you knew you better be home by 5 o’clock for dinner. Now we can follow them on Life360, we can follow them with their social media hits on Instagram and Snapchat if you’re friends with them, and everywhere else there is a level of responsibility that has made it much different for kids to be kids today.
At the heart of things, they’re still kids. Big kids, little kids. They’re still students and it’s our responsibility to prepare them the best we can for what comes next in life.
Kids, believe it or not, really haven’t changed as much as you think maybe that they have. What’s changed is their accessibility to information.
What changes have you seen in K-12 education that you view as positive and that you view as negative?
I think the way that we differentiate for students today with our level of instruction is much different. It is so much less direct instruction than when we were students in school, certainly when I was. It’s how you make learning authentic, how you make it come alive. One of the things that is certainly a challenge is that now it seems we’re so judged by test scores. That’s not the reality. The reality is test scores are just one indicator of student success. It’s not the sole indicator of student success.
You have to look at the whole picture, not just one piece of it.
Is there too much of an emphasis on teaching to the test in education?
I have never been a proponent of necessarily teaching to the test. I believe what good teachers do is they teach to test-taking strategies that are embedded throughout their regular instruction. For example, this is what a question may look like on the test and that is how I’m going to frame a question on this particular assessment. When kids feel comfortable and confident in how the test will look, it reduces test anxiety among our students. You also let students know this is important, we want you to do well, because what do test results do? It helps teachers inform how they’re going to guide their instruction down the road.
I don’t want to be caught up in a system where every day we’re teaching to the test. It’s also interesting when we look at math and language arts — yes, there’s a science component, too — but is the NJSLA (New Jersey Student Learning Assessment) solely the responsibility of math and language arts teachers? No. You can still as a social studies teacher say, ‘Here’s a writing prompt that will help you on the NJSLA-ELA portion of it.’ I’ll leave it at that.
You have been going to numerous athletic events so far this fall. What do you believe is the value of athletics in student life?
I think the value of extracurricular involvement in general, not just athletics, getting involved in anything — the play, the musical, the fishing club, whatever it may be — it creates a more well-rounded individual and it allows kids to experience learning in a very meaningful way when they take an interest in getting involved in other endeavors beyond just school. And I understand it’s hard for some students. Some students may need to work after school, but that work life gives them a different appreciation for the practical side of what they’re doing in class.
Given the many tragic events at schools around this nation in the past 20 years, what are your concerns about safety and how do you plan to address them here in Ocean City?
First and foremost we have a responsibility to create a safe learning environment for students and staff. You put mechanisms in place to accomplish that. It’s unfortunate that we have to think that way in this day and age, but you couple that with everyone’s overall mental wellness, their well-being and getting to know kids. I believe one of the central tenets of creating a safe school environment is for kids to connect to trusting adults within their school environment. When kids feel comfortable speaking to adults in school, it becomes a mechanism whereby they feel safe and you create a system that is safe.
Have you relocated to the area yet or is that in your future plans?
I’m in Manahawkin. I won’t be in Ocean City.
When you have downtime, how do you prefer to spend it?
My best times are spent with my family. My wife and I have a son who just graduated college, my daughter is a sophomore at Stockton (University). I love to fish. I have a close-knit group of high school friends and we all have been riding motorcycles together for quite some time. We enjoy doing that.
Believe it or not, when I’m not at school events, I’m pretty much a homebody. I think the safest place to be is my backyard.”
– STORY by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff