MARBLEHEAD — Marblehead Public Schools announced that Frank Kowalski, who has been the interim principal at Glover Elementary School for the 2024-25 school year, will be appointed as principal beginning this July.
Kowalski, born and raised in Chelsea, has 25 years of educational leadership experience, but this was his first elementary school role. He previously taught middle school history and English and “spent the majority of my life” at the high school level as an athletic director, administrator and coach.
“Now it’s a full circle because I’ve worked with every age bracket in schools,” he said.
Kowalski thanked Interim Superintendent John Robidoux for allowing him “to run this building” because “fortunately for me, it’s gone pretty well.” He also emphasized the value of a principal being visible.
“I think most principals are like, ‘Yeah, I’ll be visible,’ but visibility to me is being outside in front of the school every day, greeting the kids, greeting the parents, being in the classrooms, being part of what they’re teaching in class, having the kids know me,” Kowalski said. “That’s worked for my whole career.”
He said he is looking forward to the “stability” that will come with removing the word “interim” from his job title.
“Turnover is never good for a school, and Glover has had, I think, four principals over the last two years,” Kowalski said. “With that type of (in)stability, there’s no structure in the schools.”
He said his main goal moving forward into the 2025-26 school year is to “talk to the teachers about setting benchmarks (and) how we want to start the new school year.”
Kowalski said it’s been “interesting to see how my perspective has changed” since shifting to elementary education.
“Being an elementary principal or teacher, not everyone understands or values it because these kids aren’t going to college anytime soon, but the beginning of their careers is so important to get them to the tougher years,” he said. “People think this is easy, right? And I thought this was easy coming in here.
“But seeing the teachers teach and seeing what I do every day, it’s not as demanding as teaching maybe an AP Chemistry class in high school, but the value is just as important – and the patience that these teachers have every single day with these kids running around and asking questions at the same time, it’s a lot.”
He said the highlight of his time at Glover so far has been setting the students up for success. He added that he has “done a lot of learning about child development.”
“Now I get to see them at the beginning, which is cool because I see all the gaps that kids run into when they get older, and now, being here, we can work on those gaps the kids have – especially with social, emotional learning and liking school,” he said. “I see kids that just don’t like school when they get to high school, and it’s like the foundational career springboards you into your impression of school, and if we give them a good experience, kids will hopefully build off of that.”
He added that “foundation is so important for everything that we do in life.”
“At this level, (the students) have no foundation, right? They’re learning, and what we teach them is what they’re going to know, what they’re going to remember, which is cool because we teach them all the simple things like how to open a locker and how to put the books in their cubby, and all these things I never thought in my life I would ever be doing, but it’s cool knowing that they don’t know how to do it, and it’s our job to show them,” Kowalski said.
He added, “And the better they get at that stuff, the more confidence they’ll get. This is all about building confidence in kids, right? And make them have friendships, and they can learn about themselves and how to deal with things that don’t go their way.”
Kowalski mentioned that when the school does theme days, which they do quite often, some kids get upset when they don’t win prizes, “but that’s part of life, right?”
“We teach them how to cope with that. When they cry, it’s OK. When they fall down, it’s OK,” he said. “Those are all things that these kids learn for the first time, and it’s nice to be part of that.”
