Swampscott School Committee interviews superintendent finalist

SWAMPSCOTT-The Swampscott School Committee interviewed their second finalist for superintendent, Arlington Public Schools Interim Superintendent Dr. Kathleen Bodie, on Friday.Bodie answered questions from the committee and members of the community, citing her passion for education and her advocacy for uniform curriculum.”You want to give all your students the same opportunities to learn the same things as their peers in other schools,” Bodie said.Bodie has served as the interim superintendent in Arlington since 2008, when the current superintendent resigned following the controversial dismissal of a teacher and principal from a middle school. She said the subsequent arbitration is still an issue in the community, and although she initially put herself in the running for the vacancy, she has since withdrawn herself from consideration.”It’s still a very difficult issue in town, and as a result there are a lot of political opinions on it,” Bodie said. “The situation is continuing to go on.”Bodie said she would like to bring more students into the public school system that may have been lured to private or charter schools, an initiative she worked on in Arlington with success.”In the past two years the number of students going (out of the district) has been brought down from 115 to the high 80s,” Bodie said. “We brought back 14 kids last year.”Bodie has also worked on promoting building special education programs in her current district. She has helped to create autistic learning programs to keep young special education students in the district, as well as supported learning centers at all levels of instruction to provide developmental support to special needs students.”We had to convince people that this is going to be great programming, and it is,” she said. “It’s all about having the right structure, the right attitude in the teachers, the right professional development. It’s all about having the right people.”Bodie said she agrees with the town’s master plan to possibly shutter one of its elementary schools and rebuild another; she said with the district’s drops in enrollment, the move makes sense, but it may take awhile.”It’s quite a process to secure funding (for construction) on the state level and the city level,” she said.Prior to her appointment to the interim position, Bodie was the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction in Arlington for one year, and was director of the district’s math department from 200 until 2007. She received her doctorate in Education from Boston College and was previously a math teacher at various levels, including at the collegiate level.