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"It's not like I'm coming from New Jersey," said Polack,
38, dabbing away tears of her own. "It's very far."
It was the day before Thanksgiving, Polack's last day on the job
after more than seven years as principal of the 180-student elementary
school in Tribeca's Independence Plaza. She and her husband and
their two children would soon be flying off to a new life in Minnesota,
farther than these P.S. 150 students could imagine.
Yet for all the sadness, no one doubted that Polack was leaving
the school in good hands.
"She's pretty, funny and cool," Leticia Moya said about
Maggie Siena, the new principal. "She's awesome."
Siena, 42, worked alongside Polack for several weeks, getting to
know the children and staff and learning the school's administrative
minutiae. As the time to take over approached, she declared herself
ready.
"Everything's working really well, so it's just, what do we
want to do to make this school work even better?" said Siena,
a resident of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, who previously taught kindergarten,
fourth grade and fifth grade at P.S. 234. That school's principal,
Anna Switzer, had picked Siena as her assistant principal before
the two founded City Hall Academy in Tweed Courthouse in 2003. They
later worked for an education consulting firm.
It was Switzer who called Siena about the job opening at P.S. 150.
"She said, 'You can't believe what's happening,'" Siena
said, recalling her thrill at the prospect of heading the school.
With children of her own-a five-year-old
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