The search is on for a permanent superintendent for Boston Public Schools. Dr. Tommy Chang recently stepped down, prompting the appointment of an interim superintendent to run things in the meantime. Boston City Councilor-At-Large Annissa Essaibi-George joined WGBH's Morning Edition anchor Joe Mathieu to talk about the selection process and what criteria the city should use. Essaibi-George chairs the council's Committee on Education, is a former BPS teacher and is the mother of several boys who attend public school in Boston.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity.
Joe Mathieu: It's great to see you in person as we talk about this very important story. There's been a lot of concerns about the process of picking the interim superintendent before we get to the full permanent search. Did you have concerns about the way this went — is the Boston public school system in good hands right now?
Councilor Annissa Essaibi-George: The BPS Schools — our Boston Public Schools are in very good hands right now for the interim, and it's very exciting. As much as it's a very anxious time, especially as a parent and as a former teacher, and I think about my colleagues who continue to work in our classrooms and our schools across the district, there's a lot of anxiety of course, and I think that's very normal. But it's also good when we have a little bit of a shift in leadership — a new set of eyes, a new set of listening ears to have very good and helpful and great conversations with our school leaders, our parents, our teachers and our kids.
Mathieu: There were some concerns about the speed with which Ms. [Laura] Perille was selected and the fact that she was coming from the private sector. Are those concerns of yours?
Essaibi-George: They're not concerns of mine. I think we needed an interim superintendent appointment and we needed it quickly. I would say Laura is not coming from a real private sector experience. She comes from the nonprofit world. She's been working with our Boston Public Schools for many, many years. She's also a former BPS parent and a city of Boston resident, which is really important. It's not the full package quite honestly, that I'd like in a superintendent, but I'm very excited for her in her role as interim superintendent.
Mathieu: So now we get on to the big search. And I remember very well the last time we went through this — it wasn't that long ago — when Carol Johnson left, it took almost two years to find Tommy Chang. You want to see this go faster than that.
Essaibi-George: Well, I don't know whether it will be quicker than two years to get to a permanent placement of a superintendent, but I do think that the process needs to start quickly. We have to help Laura get her feet settled, herself grounded in this work and prepared over the summer to open our schools in September and to make sure that she's had the ability to communicate and connect with many of our parents and of course, our students. But we also need to get to the work of finding a permanent leader. And I hesitate a little bit when I use the word permanent because it's not.
Mathieu: - it's not a lifetime appointment.
Essaibi-George: It's not a lifetime appointment. And I would like to see someone who has had experience in the classroom, especially in Boston, and has a deep knowledge of the system and really is tuned into the needs of our families across the district. And we put a lot of pressure on that person, and sometimes it's seen as negative, sometimes it's seen as overreaching, but it's so unbelievably important that we're giving our kids in the city of Boston every advantage they need to achieve in life.
Mathieu: When you consider the job ahead, how would you describe that to a candidate? Because that could be a lot of different things. And you have a unique perspective from inside the school system from your time as a teacher. What's got to change around here?
Essaibi-George: Well the job ahead is a difficult one. There is no secret sauce to being successful at this job. But it's a really complex position where you have to have both a true relationship with the political forces — because we know you can't be successful in the city if you're not politically astute to the dynamics that are always at play- but you need to have an equally great, wonderful relationship with our families, with our school leaders and the kids in those schools and then the community at large. And managing those relationships can be very difficult. And I think a teacher would be most successful as a superintendent of schools in any district. We can hire a really good manager that is well-trained academically and has the appropriate degrees but if they can't manage those relationships, if they can't deliver their message, their vision and motivate the people around them to move our school system ahead, they're not going to be successful.
Mathieu: I want to ask you about the homelessness issue that you've been talking about recently, because I'm compelled by it and we've spent a lot of time talking to Mayor Walsh about the Long Island Bridge project. And we went to Quincy and talked to Mayor Koch about it, and they are not getting along on this right now. But it's kind of the backdrop for what you're talking about, in a sense, with in many cases first time people who find themselves without a home, coming from outside of the city and ending up in shelters here —getting treatment here in the city of Boston and that's a burden on the city in many different ways.
Essaibi-George: It is. It is. And there is a lot at play. First, we have 57,000 students in the Boston Public Schools. Almost 4,000 of them are experiencing homelessness, and the mayor has been very supportive, and Dr. Chang was also very supportive of the efforts that we need to be doing in our schools to support those kids.
Mathieu: — and in many cases the only real meal they're getting is at school.
Essaibi-George: Well we think about food, we think about consistency, we think about stability. School is often the only place where those students who are experiencing homelessness at that time, so working with our kids through our schools has been really important for me.
Mathieu: So you've been exposed to this issue as an educator.
Essaibi-George: I remember the first student that I had in my classroom — I didn't understand their address because it was like a downtown address — it ended up being Bridge Over Troubled Waters. But at first, I was like, 'I don't understand.' And then he goes, 'Ms. I'm homeless'. And it just floored me that as a young teacher, that I didn't, like it just dawned on me and I was embarrassed, of course. But then, I was grateful for the knowledge that he was able to share with me and the experience that he was able to share with me and it really awoken me to some of the real challenges that our kids face. We have kids that are in real crisis but we also have in this city, a number of individuals, about 60 percent of them are coming from outside of the city seeking shelter. And two and a half years ago, it was about 40 percent. That number then grew to 50 and now we're hitting 60 percent. And really for me, the core of the message that I'm trying to share is: if you want us to do this work for your people, you need to help us do it.
Mathieu: So, is that handled on that municipal level or does this become a state issue?
Essaibi-George: Well, I think it's a combination of both of those things. It's the council's role to advocate on behalf of the city to the state, but then also work in partnership with our neighboring communities in particular because we do find that we have individuals who are in our shelters up to 18 months sometimes — sometimes a little bit longer depending on the circumstance. And we need help to eventually return them to their communities. Or if they're going to stay in the city of Boston, become residents of one of our neighborhoods, that they do that in a productive way.
