LYNN — Nearly six months after Dr. Patrick Tutwiler announced his resignation as Superintendent of Schools in June, Mayor Jared Nicholson, alongside the city council, voted unanimously to select Chief Academic Officer of Providence Public Schools Dr. Evonne Alvarez to be the district’s next Superintendent of Schools Thursday evening.
Wednesday night, school committee members interviewed candidates Kevin McCaskill and Molly Cohen, the two other finalists in the Superintendent Search Committee’s selection process. After her interview Thursday night, Alvarez, who spent 27 years working in the Miami-Dade school district in Florida as a teacher, principal, district director and administrative director, was voted in unanimously after a 25-minute discussion.
As the board discussed candidates, school committee member Tiffany Magnolia suggested that the committee hold an initial vote to determine whether or not the final candidate election should be held that night. For the sake of a thorough selection process, Magnolia and Dugan voted to postpone the final vote until Tuesday, but the other five members said that they were ready to vote Thursday evening.
In discussions, six out of the seven members said that Alvarez was their primary choice. The exception was school committee member Eric Dugan, who said that he was torn between Cohen and Alvarez, because Cohen, being the former Principal of Marshall Middle School, could provide local perspective to the role.
“I’m a little torn, to tell you honestly. Obviously Dr. Alvarez did a fabulous job tonight, but I also feel like Molly Cohen has something to bring to the table as well, just by her roots in Lynn. I think she’d be able to hit the ground running,” Dugan said.
Nicholson said that while it was a close choice, Alvarez’s expressed dedication to driving student engagement with the educational process made her stand out as the prime candidate.
“It was an incredibly difficult time for the Lynn Public Schools, and it’s really inspiring to see the level of equality of candidates that this position has attracted, and I think that it is really a testament to the whole team here,” Nicholson said. “I thought that her [Alvarez’s] pointing to expanding our pool of referrals and partnerships and helping students deal with issues outside the classroom, building those relationships directly with the housing organizations, directly with the food organizations, was a really compelling point.”
In her interview, Alvarez presented a slideshow demonstrating the work that she’s done to transform school spaces across her districts in Miami-Dade and Providence. Successes in classroom transformation, including installing computer labs, zoology labs, and stock exchange ticker tape in schools to engage students toward curriculum, Nicholson said, stood out to him during the interview process.
“I was really impressed with her discussion of the work that she’s done inside the schools she’s worked at, the districts she’s worked at, and also her representation of those issues in other arenas,” Nicholson. “She’s got experience at a much larger district that has experienced that transformation … seeing the references confirm that the success she’s had in Providence and in Miami, I think, is really important.”
Dugan said that he voted against holding the election Thursday night, despite the fact that he said there was a “clear candidate,” because he did not want the process to feel rushed. However, after all other committee members stated that they planned to vote for Alvarez, Dugan and Magnolia agreed that they were ready to make a motion to vote that night.
The committee voted unanimously to elect Alvarez, pending contract negotiations, before a recess in which they called Alvarez to inform her of her position.
Before the recess, school committee member Lenny Pena said that he was pleased to see the daughter of immigrants elected to a leadership position in the district.
“If those kids can see someone and they say, ‘Wow, that looks just like me’ and ‘That could be me,’ that’s my passion, it’s something that I’ve been wanting to fight for. To see someone represent the students, the majority of them, linguistically, it’s just perfect. Dr. Alvarez is the perfect description for the job. She has all the qualifications, she’s a person of color, and she represents the students linguistically.”
Although Alvarez was not present for the school committee’s final discussions, or her own election, she said, at the end of her interview, that she applied for the position to allow students in Lynn the same educational opportunities that she was given.
“I do believe that I have the years of experience, the knowledge, and the expertise with the fourth largest urban district in the country that was not always an A-rated district,” Alvarez said. “When I see the population in Lynn, when I walked the classrooms today, there’s one degree of separation between the students and myself, and that is education. The doors that were opened for me because of the education that I received, and that someone made that possible for me.”
