Staff Report
The Everett Public Schools held their Back To School Convocation Monday at Everett High School.
Everett teachers enjoyed breakfast in the school cafeteria before Supt. of Schools William Hart officially welcomed everyone to the start of the 2024-25 academic year.
Everett School Committee Chair Jeanne Cristiano also spoke at the event. Dr. Kris Lee, an internationally recognized behavioral science clinician, researcher, educator, speaker, and comedian from Boston, was keynote speaker.
Everett Assistant Supt. of Teaching, Learning, and Student Success, Dr. Margaret Adams also delivered remarks. Kelly St. Fort was the student speaker.
In a nice touch to the event, the award-winning Everett High School marching band, led by Gene O’Brien, serenaded the teachers as they entered the school.
Following are Supt. of Schools William Hart’s remarks:
Good morning, and welcome to the start of the 2024-2025 school year.
I hope you had an enjoyable summer with family and friends and that you are as excited as I am to welcome more than 7,400 students to our schools later this week.
As you many of know, I was appointed the permanent Superintendent of the Everett Public Schools in this, my beloved hometown, in December of 2024. I am as committed to my role as you are to yours. Together, we will do amazing things for our students.
This morning is the very beginning of our journey together. Along the way, I look forward to seeing you at performances, programs, sporting events, theater productions, and any number of great things that happen during this school year. To the greatest extent possible, I want to see, feel, and experience the amazing things you do for our students. You will see me around and, when you do, don’t be shy: Please say hello.
Today’s program includes a quote by Horace Mann, the Father of Public Education.
He said, and I quote: “Education, then beyond all other devices of great human origin, is a great equalizer.”
I have always believed in that quote because I have witnessed the power of education. I have seen it transform lives.
It’s true — public education is a Great Equalizer. Or, as Former First Lady Michelle Obama has called it, “the greatest pathway to opportunity in America.”
Education opens doors to the best the world has to offer. That means your impact is immeasurable, and the great things our students can achieve is limitless.
While this is a magical thing, it doesn’t mean it happens by magic. It takes a lot of work — from all of us. You have immense responsibilities to the students in the Everett Public Schools, and my team has immense obligations to you and the district’s 1,200 employees
I will match your tirelessness. I will match your passion. I will match your thoughtfulness. I will join you in asking, What Can We Do Better? What do we need more of?
I started in this awesome position 10 months ago. Trust me, you have given me all the motivation I need — and more. I have seen what your passion, dedication, skill, and experience bring to our students. To our programming. To our extracurricular’s. To our arts. To our athletics. To our mission to make sure that the Everett Public Schools is a safe and strong part of the fabric in the lives of our students and families.
Believe me, there is nowhere I’d rather be than the Everett Public Schools. And I want you to feel the same way. Which is why I have spent a good portion of the last several months gearing up for this day. After all, you only get one chance to start a new school year.
As a result, considerable thought, strategy, and collaboration went into the budget and planning process in preparing for the 2024-2025 school year.
I learned as much as possible about the curriculum, programming, staffing, and operations of the Everett Public Schools because I am invested in everything we do — individually and collectively. I have totally immersed myself in this job with an intentional focus on doubling our efforts on teaching, learning, and student success. I want to get back to those essential basics. I want the efforts of Central Administration to flow to our schools and our classrooms and, most importantly, to all of you.
As for this morning, I hope to provide a quick but clear look at where we stand today, especially what we are putting together across the district that benefits you and the work you do.
In this light, it makes sense to start by saying that the EPS welcomes its first-ever Assistant Superintendent of Teaching, Learning, and Student Success. Dr. Margaret Adams, who you will hear from later this morning. She brings a wealth of experience and perspectives to the district — from her years in the classroom and senior administrative positions to her most recent tenure as Superintendent in Hingham.
Dr. Adams will play a pivotal role in making sure we stay true to our instructional focus for 2024-2025 and beyond — ensuring that all K-to-12 students are engaged in grade-appropriate assignments that meet the depth of grade-level standards.
Our instructional focus sprung from the work of our District Wide Instructional Leadership Team, which convened in April of 2024 with the support of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Statewide Systems of Support (SoSS) Team. After internal discussions and a review of all third-party instructional audits from the previous two school years, all indicators pointed to the need for increased rigor and higher order thinking as a priority area of growth.
The EPS will measure progress by using Webb’s Depth of Knowledge Levels as an indicator of rigor and higher order thinking for all students throughout the year. District and school leaders have been receiving training on Webb’s Depth of Knowledge, including how to identify and promote higher order thinking in their respective disciplines and grade levels, and how to provide specific, actionable feedback to teachers in this area.
To further boost these efforts, we have restored and created vital district-wide academic positions, hiring professionals who will join a great team that includes Special Education Director Dr. Billy Donohue, Director of Instruction Anne Auger, Director of English Learners Genevieve McDonough, and K-to-8 STEM Director Rupi Kaur.
This list includes
Director of Tier II Mathematics Jacqueline Fallon
K-12 Director of Tier II Literacy Audra Lessard
K-8 Social Studies Director Marena MacLaughlin
K-8 Director of ELA and Literacy Louise DeSisto
and Director of Instructional Technology Kristina Aiello
That is only the beginning. We have hired 47 full-time teachers,
12 long-term substitutes, and 10 paraprofessionals.
We recruited a team of 18 social workers to provide essential services to our students, ease the pressure on our guidance counselors, and improve our work in the pressing — and burgeoning — area of social-emotional learning, which is led by SEL Director Dr. Brian Wallace.
For the first time, there are two assistant principals in our K-8 buildings, which aids operations, security, responsiveness, and family engagement and helps to promote and maintain a healthy learning environment.
We made a financial commitment to purchasing new technology, equipment, and curriculum — which will you learn about when you meet in your buildings and/or as departments. This could be something as elemental as new desks. It could be related to social emotional learning or calming rooms we have created at the Devens and Madeline English Schools. Or it could be directed items like the adaptive and sensory equipment we have purchased for our special education students.
You are integral to our mission to support our students beyond the classroom, whether that is through athletics and extracurricular activities, summer programming, and/or vacation-week opportunities. This summer saw a 37-percent increase in summer participation over 2023, as students across the district took advantage of 22 distinct programs — including athletic clinics, art camps, robotics, summer internships, credit recovery opportunities, band camp, EL programs, and targeted academic enrichment. Together, these opportunities keep our students engaged, safe, and connected to this district and this community.
Best of all, our enrichment programs are driven by you — our teachers, professionals, and staff.
As always, we make a financial commitment to helping you advance your careers and reach your professional goals. To use just one quick example, in the spring and summer of 2024, we awarded over $148,000 in teacher diversification grants to teachers, paraprofessionals, and substitute teachers so they can earn advanced academic credentials. We will continue to vigorously pursue grants and partnerships that expand opportunities for you — whether you’re a paraprofessional who wants to earn a bachelor’s degree or a veteran teacher who wants to receive a CAGs certificate.
Our new Chief Technology Officer, Joe Patuto, joined the district earlier this year and his work is directly related to yours. His efforts have included:
• A Comprehensive Security Audit to identify critical vulnerabilities and areas for enhancement.
• The successful on-boarding of the aforementioned director of instructional technology, who will help drive the integration of technology with teaching and learning.
• Joe is refining our IT service model to make sure we utilize comprehensive service metrics to ensure we are delivering the best and fastest service possible.
• Joe has completed an Infrastructure Assessment, which is in direct response to your rightful concerns about poor network performance. We will identify and resolve any performance issues, so our teaching and learning will be backed up by a reliable and secure network environment.
• We are implementing a minimum character length for passwords and rolling out multi-factor authentication across the district. These measures will significantly enhance our security posture by ensuring stronger authentication processes and reducing the risk of unauthorized access.
• And, as always, security is at the heart of what we do. To this end, our security and tech teams have made significant progress in improving the performance of our security cameras and their supporting infrastructure, as we aim to protect our most valuable assets — our students and employees.
Moving on to Human Resources, we are re-energizing that department under the guidance of our new director, Elaine Monge, who is bringing dedicated focus to providing YOU with the service and responsiveness you deserve.
We’re not done with this work, but we are on the right track. Elaine has been successfully recruiting seasoned Human Resource and payroll specialists to support every aspect of our HR operations, and we are in the process of switching our payroll system back to a stronger, more user-friendly platform.
The rollover will begin in October, and it will have a self-service feature that will let you look at your pay stubs and view your W-2’s, among other options. And, have no fear, you will NOT receive two W-2 forms after 2024 concludes.
This work takes time. Please be patient. But also please recognize that we have heard you and your concerns and that there needs to be a customer-service function to our HR operations.
I am pleased to report that contract negotiations are proceeding with purpose and civility. We have reached an agreement with our invaluable Administrative Assistants this past spring, and we are currently engaging in fair, productive, and transparent negotiations with our teachers, paraprofessionals, and custodians.
So much of the work we are doing grew out of the conversations I had with many of you during last school year. Thanks to the Everett Teachers Association, and in particular President Kim Auger, for scheduling Coffee Hours and Meet-and-Greets across our schools. What better way to hear directly from you? I look forward to similar gatherings this year, as we continue this journey.
In a similar light, we all share the belief that we need more space. I cannot stress to you how impressed I’ve been with your creativity and perseverance. If there is a space to be used to deliver instruction, you have located it. You have, in the truest sense, optimized a less-than-optimal situation. Now it’s time for your leaders to step up.
I am working with the city on a plan for a seventh and eighth grade middle school at the former Everett High School on Broadway. This will restore lost classrooms, libraries, and individualized learning spaces in our existing K-to-8 schools and open the door to a grade- and age-appropriate educational experience for our seventh and eighth graders. My thanks to everyone who has supported me at every step in the process; my thanks to everyone who has shown me, with crystal-clear clarity, what we are up against. I hope to deliver on this solution as the final deliberation and vote to fund this expansion is scheduled to occur at the September 9th City Council meeting.
I bring up our Middle School plan not to suggest it provides us immediate relief, but to illustrate that we are looking in only one direction — up. We are thinking in terms of more and better — not the same, and Never Less.
Which leads me to the second quote in the program — one by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who implores us to, and I quote:
“Do your little bit of good where you are.
It’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
This powerful statement is ideally suited to all of you, the student-facing professionals of the Everett Public Schools. I know your days are filled with little bits of good. It is a thought that fills me with endless hope. Because those bits of good compound. They expand. The bits of good you produce combine with those of your colleagues. They form connections and bonds. They make us stronger and better.
If we accept that Public Education is a great equalizer, then it is those little bits of good that tip the scales.