Dr. Waveline Bennett-Conroy was appointed the new Superintendent of Schools of the Mount Vernon City School District and took the Oath of Office to begin her new job on July 1, 2022. She hopes that she will be able to enhance the district’s promotion of family wellness “through advocacy, empowering, educating, and building relationships between families and the educational community. In taking her new role, Dr. Bennett-Country completes a circle of participation she began when taking responsibility for the district as Interim Superintendent in 2011. Her philosophy of education involves understanding that children must be engaged at the level where they are and must make adjustments that display an understanding of their life stories in order to return them to wholeness. She is actively involved with redesigning the delivery of instruction with a focus on data analysis, conversations about how to improve current conditions, and the creation of long-term relationships between the school district, students, and their families.
Dr. Bennett-Conroy began her tenure as superintendent with the supervision of the “Big Five” districts in New York, which include some 8,289 students in 12 K-through-8th-grade schools, and three themed high schools. The districts employ some 1,500 staff members.
Growing up in Jamaica, Dr. Bennett-Conroy started out in education teaching Spanish and science at St. Elizabeth Technical High School. She migrated to the United States and began her teaching career there at the Field Day Elementary School in Riverdale in 1989 as a science teacher. In 1990, she began what would become an 11-year career as a Spanish teacher at the Preston High School for Girls in the Bronx. She moved on to teach Spanish at Mount Vernon High School in 2001.
Dr. Bennett-Conroy has a Doctorate in Education Leadership with a concentration in executive leadership from the College of New Rochelle/St. John Fisher College. The excellent research displayed in her dissertation on “Engaging Parents of 8th grade Students in Parent/Teacher Bidirectional Communication,” led to its publication in The School Community Journal, American Teacher, and the American Federation of Teachers magazine.
She has three MA degrees: one in Educational Administration and Supervision from the College of New Rochelle; one in sociology from Fordham University; and one in Spanish from the University of the West Indies. She also has two BA degrees: one in computer science from Fordham University and one in microbiology from Jamaica College of Agriculture, Science and Education.
