LYNN — Dr. Evonne Alvarez is Lynn’s Public School District’s first-ever Latina woman Superintendent, a title she wears with pride as she leads the future generation.
Officially starting in the district in July 2023, Alvarez said what originally drew her to the district was seeing herself in the students.
“The most exciting thing was that 89% of the students were Hispanic and/or identified as black,” Alvarez said about the Lynn Public Schools. “As a person of color, and as a former educator in the fourth largest district in the country that has a similar or higher minority population, that was really attractive to me.”
Previously, Alvarez was the administrative director over school choice and parental options at Miami-Dade in Florida, overseeing 114 schools and around 72,000 students. Alvarez said working in a small setting wouldn’t fit with her experience, so she chose Lynn, which she said has around 17,000 students in the district.
One of the first times Alvarez stepped into a Lynn classroom, she said many of the students had an ‘aha moment’ when she started speaking both English and Spanish to them.
“There’s certainly something to be said about seeing yourself in someone else. We want our students to know that regardless of where they came from … there’s always some identifier, whether it’s gender or race. There’s something that connects you to the people who are leading and making decisions and impacting your own quality of life,” Alvarez said.
Being a woman, particularly a woman in an authority position, Alvarez said, has some benefits. Specifically, balancing multiple responsibilities at a time and providing a supportive environment towards other women.
“I think all women learn how to balance a multitude of responsibilities when we have families to take care of, when we have demanding jobs where we have to multitask, and I have to tell you that this is my 29th year being an educator, and it’s been difficult and different in different positions, and I think that being a woman helps support doing the things that are hard,” Alvarez said.
Currently, Alvarez is working on numerous ideas and changes within the district, including putting together the very first data team, which will use real-life student data to determine the best teaching methodology.
“Knowledge can’t live with one person. We want to make sure that we have systemic and institutional change,” Alvarez said. “Hopefully, when we’ve made a number of changes, someone will say, ‘Some of those changes were made by the first Latina superintendent: who was a woman.’”
Alvarez said she wouldn’t be where she is today without the influence of another persistent and strong woman in her life; for her, that was her grandmother.
“I had the most wonderful grandmother; a matriarch in my family, but she certainly was probably the strongest woman and human being I’ve ever met,” Alvarez said. “She always said, ‘You’re going to end up exactly where you’re supposed to be.’”
Alvarez now knows exactly what she meant by that.
Working in education was something Alvarez has always wanted; to be able to change someone’s life and help children reach their full potential.
“I think that being a woman is extremely difficult, and I think that having a woman that is a strong role model, that is a loving role model, that is a caring role model; someone that believes that you can do anything more than you even believe in yourself, determines a lot of the course of your future life,” Alvarez said.
Alvarez has two daughters of her own. The oldest is 25, and recently got her master’s in Journalism at the Harvard Extension School. The youngest is 22 and recently got her masters in Business Administration from Florida International University.
“I think it’s really important for women, especially women of color, to know there’s always a seat for you. And that sometimes when doors are closed, you need to keep knocking, and that goes for all women, but I think particularly it’s even more discouraging when you don’t see women that look like you, or you feel like you don’t belong at a table,” Alvarez said.
