12 / matters magazine / school 2026 Just Call Him ‘Frank’ Columbia High School’s principal prepares for a new year BY NATHANIEL KRAEMER T he principal’s office at Columbia High School is a small wood-paneled room where everything is open – win dows, books, folders, cabinet-doors – and seemingly in a state of active use. Everything is also functional, save one personal touch, kept on the cof fee table at which he seats visitors: a 3-foot-long polished stone cougar. This is Columbia’s mascot. When holding meetings in this office, Principal Frank Sanchez sits at that coffee table as well, in a matte-black armchair. He smiles when he talks, a warm, friendly smile that punctuates his sweep ing, enthusiastic midair motions while describing the results of this year’s Advanced Placement (AP) tests, a point of pride for the administration. “We used to have only 600 students take AP tests. Now we’re at 777. And the number of ex ams went from 1,000 to almost 1,600. You can see how many students have really focused on post- high school academics since then,” he says. Sanchez rarely dresses like a principal. During the interview, he wears a red Columbia quarter-zip and olive khakis, the same outfit in which he leads assemblies and walks the halls. His mass messages to the student body are similarly informal, not to mention infrequent. He prefers his interactions with the kids to be face- to-face. In my three years as a student, I’ve never seen him greet anyone with anything other than a smile. He makes a point of standing on the steps outside the main entrance each morning. He greets people, shaking their hands and saying hello. To teach ers and students, he’s neither Mr. nor Principal Sanchez: He is Frank, brought into conversations with the same tone as a friend. He is an administrator like no other. Sanchez has well over 20 years of experience Principal Frank Sanchez at home in his office at Columbia High School. Photo by Nathaniel Kraemer. Photo by Joy Yagid
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