Frank Cardona

Frank Cardona is the Assistant Principal and Athletic Director at Portland High School, but before that he was actually a Spanish teacher. “I loved being a teacher, I enjoyed it. I taught Spanish for 17 and a half years. I miss it sometimes.” Cardona spoke about his two unique roles in an interview with The Highlander.

Cardona said his current dual role is challenging but also rewarding. Due to having two jobs he has a lot of responsibilities, and has to work a lot harder than he did when he had one job working as a teacher. 

Each day, Cardona is responsible for daily discipline, the academic eligibility program (MAPP), is in charge of sporting events, and so much more. When there is a sports event that is a home game, he has to be there because it’s part of his job. He is in charge of the coaches and also schedules the sporting events. As Athletic Director, he he is able to go to the games for free and see all of the teams play - a perk of the job.

All of this keeps him very busy. So the students-athletes often schedule time with him in order to ask questions or just have a talk with him. 

“It takes a lot of responsibility to do two jobs, but it takes time away from my day. I'm so busy doing things that I don't really have time for anything else, in school I’m not able to have long conversations with students because of my jobs. This is a kind of challenge that I have to overcome in order to do the things that I have to do or get done. If I were to complete these challenges then I would be able to have or get more time to do what I would want to do.”