The hiring of a new superintendent to succeed Dr. Catherine C. Latham, who is retiring in July, will be perhaps the most important decision undertaken in Lynn this year.
But that decision should be preceded by eliminating residency as a requirement for the next school leader. Residency is an obstacle to hiring the best and the brightest. It is an archaic impediment severely limiting the talent pool the city can potentially draw from in order to hire the best person to succeed Latham.
Lynn’s superintendent for nine years and a Lynn resident, Latham has set the bar high for her successor. Her replacement will need to thoroughly understand the challenges facing the city’s 16,200-student school system.
Those challenges include making Lynn schools 21st century learning institutions. Breathtakingly fast mobile communication advances mean students are often more adept in technology than the adults teaching them.
Latham’s legacy includes mapping out the challenges and the path to achievement for children learning in urban schools. The hunt for her successor should focus on candidates with well-rounded résumés, ideally with skills forged in big-city schools like Boston’s and tempered with experience and perspectives from teaching in and leading suburban schools.
Finding someone with this expertise should be the priority. Lynn is a small city facing big-city challenges, with a student population that includes students from around the world who speak a cornucopia of languages.
The ideal candidate to succeed Latham will be an educator who understands the whole student.
But finding that ideal candidate is going to be difficult if the pool of talent is limited in any way. Residency is a rule devoid of logic. Plenty of people don’t live where they work yet still do an outstanding job for their employer.
Probably the greatest proof of the absurdity of residency is the fact that it is waived for teachers. If teachers aren’t subject to residency (which they are not), why should their boss?
Lynn’s next superintendent will need to understand the complex role teachers play in 21st century schools. Building strong partnerships with parents, grandparents, and guardians as well as community groups and institutions is increasingly one of the ways strong school districts grow stronger.
Latham has set the bar high for her successor, but the city will be shortchanging its students if residency remains a requirement for the next superintendent.
Rather than force people to live in Lynn, city officials should work to make Lynn a place in which people want to live. A great school system is a good first step toward that goal.
