Frank Napier
American school superintendent (1935–2002)
Frank Napier Jr. (August 8, 1935 – October 28, 2002) was an American educator who served as superintendent of the Paterson School District in Paterson, New Jersey. In the 1980s, he received national recognition as superintendent through Joe Louis Clark, the notable and controversial former principal of Eastside High School. It was Napier who asked Clark to be the principal of Eastside High. Napier was portrayed by Robert Guillaume in the 1989 film, Lean on Me.
Biography
Napier graduated from Paterson Central High School (since renamed as John F. Kennedy High School) in 1953. He earned his Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts degrees from William Paterson University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst conferred a Doctorate of Education degree upon him. Napier began his professional career in the Paterson school system as an elementary school teacher and coach. He was later a vice principal and then a principal. In 1972, Napier was appointed Assistant Superintendent of the Paterson school district.
“Frank Napier” enters the record as american school superintendent (1935–2002). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Frank, Napier and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q24248330. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1935, 2002, 1989 and 1953.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frank Napier” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.