The Boston School Committee on Tuesday introduced the number of two finalists for the job of superintendent of the 125 Boston Public Schools that 54,000 attend.
A nine-member search committee really useful Somerville Public Schools Superintendent Mary Skipper, superintendent of the 5,000-student Somerville Public Schools; and Tommy Welch, BPS’s Region 1 faculty superintendent (Okay-12).
“The district’s next leader must be ready to take on the challenges facing the district and share in our commitment to equity and inclusion, increasing academic achievement and engaging deeply with all community members,” School Committee Chairwoman Jeri Robinson mentioned in an announcement.
Skipper and Welch will take part in a sequence of public interviews by three panels – group companions, educators and college leaders, and college students and households – adopted by the varsity committee on Thursday and Friday, respectively.
Skipper has been superintendent of Somerville’s roughly 5,000 public faculty college students for seven years. During that point, she shortly made her mark as an modern and visionary thinker, a passionate advocate for all youth and a strategic methods builder whose method consists of leveraging group sources to assist college students, based on BPS.
Before becoming a member of Somerville, she had an “outstanding” profession at BPS, the place she oversaw 34 excessive faculties with 19,500 college students. During her time at BPS, Boston excessive faculties had the bottom drop-out and the very best commencement charges in BPS historical past. Skipper helped launch TechBoston Academy because the founding headmaster in 2002, based on BPS.
Skipper holds a bachelor’s diploma in English and Latin from Tufts University, a grasp’s diploma in schooling coverage from Harvard and a grasp’s in schooling management from Columbia Teachers College. She and her husband, Peter, reside in Dorchester and have three kids.
As the Region 1 faculty superintendent, Welch helps 15 faculties, serving over 7,000 college students throughout Charlestown, East Boston and the North End. He oversees two excessive faculties, 12 elementary faculties and an early schooling middle.
Read: Welch letter of curiosity in BPS Superintendent job, May, 2022
Prior to coming to BPS in 2015, Welch was the founding principal of a center faculty and later a highschool within the South Central neighborhood of Los Angeles, the place his classroom educating expertise centered on English learners and particular schooling inclusion within the decrease elementary grades, in addition to English at the highschool degree.
Welch is a graduate of Occidental College and the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2020, he earned his doctorate in academic management at Boston College. He lives in East Boston along with his spouse and is a guardian of two BPS college students.
Mayor Michelle Wu and School Committee Chair Jeri Robinson additionally requested the committee to formally designate Drew Echelson, deputy superintendent of teachers, as performing superintendent to cowl the window between Brenda Cassellius’s departure on June 30 and the following superintendent’s first day on the job.
The superintendent search course of started in March, when the nine-member search committee launched a sequence of public listening periods and group stakeholder conferences. The group suggestions voiced by college students, households, educators and different metropolis companions was integrated into the superintendent’s job description and knowledgeable the search committee members’ interview questions.
Beginning with 34 candidates, the search committee carried out non-public interviews all through May and June. These included pre-recorded video responses, one spherical of interviews carried out by way of Zoom and a second spherical carried out in-person.
On Friday, June 16, the search committee carried out its last deliberations and voted to pick a gaggle of finalists for the varsity committee’s consideration. Two candidates have since withdrawn from the method previous to the beginning of public interviews.
“We’ve reached a milestone that people have been anticipating for some time now,” mentioned Lorena Lopera, BPS mother and father and member of each the varsity and search committees.
“Community engagement has always been an essential part of the process, and I look forward to continuing to hear from the public this week.”
Following the interviews, the varsity committee will meet at 5 p.m. on June 29 at to vote on the candidate to supply the place of superintendent of BPS and to approve Echelson because the performing superintendent.
— Developing
Source: www.bostonherald.com”