In 1978, Terri Schuta was senior class president of Buffalo’s South Park High School.

Now she’s the principal.

But this is no homecoming, because Schuta never left.

The South Buffalo native still lives about a mile from school. She holds court with parents and students at the supermarket and at Sunday Mass. And she celebrated her appointment as principal by dining with her former principal and several South Park classmates.

“I don’t think kids understand what a proud thing it is to be a South Parker, and I think I’m the perfect role model for that,” she said. “I’m a kid from the neighborhood. Someone needs to lead South Park who loves South Park. I think that is going to resonate with the kids.”

But after seven years as principal of nearby Southside Elementary School — another South Buffalo anchor—Schuta faces huge challenges. After a decades-long slide, South Park is on the state’s watch list of troubled schools.

Its graduation rate is 39 percent, and just 76.5 percent of the students attend classes on a given day. Special-education students constitute 31 percent of the school’s enrollment, compared with a districtwide average of about 20 percent.

Schuta’s charge is clear: Get South Park off the state list by improving student performance, begin to attract top students and restore pride in the school.

That effort should get a big boost from a $39.9 million renovation project that updated the structure and provided a striking addition that includes new locker rooms and athletic facilities. After two years in temporary quarters, students will return to the Southside Parkway School next month.

Superintendent James A. Williams said Schuta’s success at Southside Elementary and community ties make her a “good fit” to succeed Patricia Thomas, who retired after last school year.

“The community doesn’t have confidence in the school,” he said. “I think she’s going to restore confidence and credibility.”

Leafing through a 1978 yearbook, Schuta — the former Terri Drilling — rattles off a list of local movers and shakers who graduated from South Park.

“We were kids who loved school,” she said. “We loved coming here. We learned about life here.”

Re-creating that atmosphere is a key part of her improvement agenda.

Schuta plans to again make the school song a prominent part of South Park activities, to re-emphasize school spirit days, to involve alumni on a regular basis and to urge each student to be part of at least one extracurricular activity.

“We have to let kids experience the good things—the spirit, the relationships, the sense of belonging,” she said.

Schuta, the former assistant principal at Lorraine Elementary School, estimates that she already knows about 400 of South Park’s 800 students.

“I’ve watched them grow up,” she said. “I almost know when they breathe. Now I have an opportunity to make a difference in their lives for the next four years.”

While things have changed since her heady days at South Park, Schuta said her background helps her relate to to-day’s students. Her late father worked at Republic Steel; her mother worked at a corner grocery store; and the family never had a car.

“I walked the same streets my students walk to school,” Schuta said. “This could be them. It’s not impossible.”

While attending an eight-day seminar at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, Schuta heard classmates discuss their educational experiences around the world. But she had a different message.

“I’ve lived my whole life within 10 blocks in South Buffalo,” she said. “There’s a significance of doing your life’s work where you live.”

Louis Petrucci, the Park District Board of Education member whose district includes South Park, said several parents already have told him they will send their children there because Schuta is principal.

“Parents trust her with their children because they know her,” he said. “That puts a lot of pressure on Terri, but she came through at Southside, and I’m sure she’ll come through at South Park.”

But Schuta senses opportunity and not pressure.

“It’s a new day and an improved day,” she said. “There’s nowhere to go but up.”