Nico Victorino, the principal of PS 150, has been selected as one of only nine principals nationwide for the Terrel H. Bell Award for Outstanding School Leadership — part of the National Blue Ribbon Schools program, which recognizes public and private schools based on their overall academic excellence or their progress in closing achievement gaps. PS 150 was selected as a Blue Ribbon School last week.

He will receive the award November 7 from the U.S. Department of Education, with the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the Association of Middle-Level Education, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, in memory of the second U.S. Secretary of Education, Terrel H. Bell. The commissioner of the landmark education study “A Nation at Risk,” Bell founded the National Blue Ribbon Schools Program in 1982 to recognize great American schools and school leaders.

Principals are nominated by their own school community during the final stages of the Blue Ribbon process. “Their vision and collaborative leadership styles have produced outstanding results for all students regardless of race/ethnicity, language proficiency, or socioeconomic status,” the award states. “They have shown that – with effective leadership and teaching and a firm conviction – all students can learn.”

Second from left in Washington Market Park

Victorino took the helm of the school in September 2021, replacing longtime principal Jenny Bonnet. At the time he had been an assistant principal at PS 276 for the previous seven years, serving under founding principal Terri Ruyter since 2012, when he arrived there as a second grade teacher. It wasn’t an accident — he met her while in grad school at Teachers College, recognized that she was brilliant and followed her downtown.

“I’ve had the blessing to work with wonderful school leaders,” Victorino says. “And I will always work for women when I have the opportunity. My mom raised me and my brothers while working, on her own, so I know what women can do.”

Victorino was born in Manila and at age 3 came here, where his mother was already at the UN, having worked with an NGO in the Philippines. He finished college in three years and taught at a private school in New Jersey until he left to get his degree in special ed. He was working at a school in Harlem in District 75 before he took a spot in one of the ICT classes at 276. In the meantime, he got his license for administration at Baruch. (He and his husband and young child live in the city.)

Even as an administrator, he spends as much time as he can in the classroom, he said. “My job in part is to be a presence, for people to know who I am,” he said.

Victorino took the job at PS 150 in part because much of the staff had been there for 20+ years — as good a sign of a healthy community as any, he said. “I could tell all the adults in the building care about what they do. And as a principal you want to know that it’s all hands on deck. It’s much more fulfilling that way.”

The school moved in 2022 to a multi-floor space on Trinity Place, and has been expanding year by year to eventually house three classes per grade (450 kids overall), which was a big change from the former one-class-per-grade cozy facility on Greenwich in Independence Plaza. But he said at the time that he was able to lean on the other Downtown principals for guidance.

“I have access to all this institutional memory. They have all been so generous, and I have a lot of support,” he says. “And then I have this staff, where I can really trust everyone to do the best job. I pinch myself every day — it’s like a dream.”

He will also be judging the high-stakes Washington Market Park Pumpkin Carving Contest on Saturday, so come by and say hi.