We are pleased to hear the Lynn School Committee is prepared to give School Superintendent Dr. Patrick A. Tutwiler a positive job evaluation next month.
Tutwiler and fellow superintendents across Massachusetts had the near-impossible task this year of educating students during a deadly pandemic.
Like scientists trying to herd mercury drops into a test tube, school leaders were forced to construct and reconstruct a learning plan based on constantly-shifting COVID-19 case rates for their respective communities.
Shifting from remote, to hybrid, to partial-hybrid, to in-person learning plans meant superintendents were required to determine the best way to educate students while keeping them healthy and factoring in teacher and parental concerns.
To his credit, Lynn Mayor Thomas M. McGee, in his role as committee chairman, succinctly summed up Tutwiler’s job performance.
“Everyone feels you’ve done a pretty outstanding job under the circumstances,” he said.
The committee voted on Dec. 3 unanimously to approve Tutwiler’s recommendation and will present its evaluation for the 2019-20 school year, including this past summer, in early January.
Committee members rejected — wisely, in our opinion — members Jared Nicholson’s and Michael Satterwhite’s recommendation to evaluate Tutwiler next spring in an evaluation that would cover the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years.
Tutwiler suggested his evaluation cover the 2019-20 school year, and the work that was done to transition to remote learning this past summer.
“I really think we need to close the books on the last year, the ’19-’20 school year,” said Tutwiler.
We agree.
In many respects, Tutwiler and fellow superintendents have shouldered three academic years packed into one since September, 2019. They led their schools through a pre-pandemic academic year that abruptly ended in March.
They shifted to remote learning in the spring through the end of the school year and then grappled throughout the summer with how to plan a new school year dominated by the pandemic.
Tutwiler is an innovator, a good communicator and — as the last year has shown — a thoughtful and, ultimately, decisive leader with a firm hand on the Lynn public school tiller.
