Giorgio: Marco Rodrigues The Right Choice for Acting Superintendent of Schools

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Paul Giorgio, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Paul Giorgio

Last Thursday, the Worcester School Committee appointed Marco Rodrigues, the current Chief Academic Officer of the Worcester Public School as acting Superintendent, replacing Melinda Boone, who resigned to take a job in her hometown of Norfolk, Virginia. In addition to going home, Boone received a substantial salary increase. She will be paid $244,000. They have 10,000 more student than the WPS, which services 25,000 students. Boone will be the third leader of the system in the last five years. She has spent six years as head of the local system here.

Boone was controversial to say the least. She was the first outsider brought in to run the system and was appointed after a search committee appointed by then Mayor Konnie Lukes, chose her over the inside candidate Stephen Mills. Boone was never really accepted into the system, which some see as clannish and insular.

This brings us to Marco Rodrigues , a twenty year veteran of the Worcester Public Schools and its Chief Academic Officer, which in essence is the number two. Some people are sniping because they believe he will just be a continuation of the Boone administration. That is not necessarily true. The appointment of Dr. Rodrigues is the least disruptive to the school system. Some in the community had pushed Maureen Binienda, the principal of South High School for the interim job. That would have been very disruptive to South. Maureen Binienda is a great principal and is doing a fantastic job at South.

A true American Success Story.

Marco Rodrigues’ story is the stuff that American dreams are made of. He emigrated from Brazil as a young adult and did not speak a word of English. He got a job sweeping floors and stocking shelves on the 11-7 shift at the former Iandoli Supermarkets and learned English during the day. He ended up with a doctorate and eventually became the number two person at the Worcester School Department, after years of teaching.

He is a role model for every student in the Worcester Public Schools, which is the second largest urban system in the state. The WPS has 25,000 students speaking about 80 different languages as their first language. I heard that about 85% of the children in the first grade speak another language at home. In effect, English is their second language.

There was a move by some members of the School Committee, to prohibit any acting superintendent from applying for the permanent job. Mayor Joe Petty, who serves as chair of the School Committee was able to secure the necessary votes to stop this. He learned his lesson well from the recent City Manger search, where Councilor Lukes did the same move in order to block Ed Augustus from becoming permanent. After a futile search, the Council did the right thing and appointed Augustus.

The selection process.

According to Mayor Petty, they are putting a process in place to select a new superintendent that requires the hiring of a search firm to screen the candidates. The process will include input from all sectors of the community.

The good thing is that the Worcester Public Schools have several good people who can fill the job. Beside Rodrigues and Binienda, you also have other quadrant managers and several former school department people including Stacey Luster, former head of Human Resources and former Voke principal Shelia Harrity who is now superintendent for the Montachusett Vocational System. Hey, maybe Steve Mills, the runner up to Boone, may come out of retirement and apply.

Keep moving in the right direction.

Right now, we can rest assured that the school department has a temporary leader at the helm who is an inspiration to the student body. Marco Rodrigues is an up from the boot straps success, story, which will guide us in the short term. Now let us begin the search for a leader of our school system that has both the academic skills and the communication skills necessary to lead our system. We have made great progress in the past few years with rising test scores and falling dropout rates. We need to keep moving in the right direction, so that we can train workers for jobs in the 21st century.