Somerville Superintendent Mary Skipper during an interview with the Boston School Committee on June 23.
"It is not an easy job...you get a lot of different things [thrown] at you," she said."But in your mind you have to ask, 'what is the most important?' And in my mind, students are the most important — everything else is around that goal." Her years as a teacher and principal of the TechBoston Academy — which she helped launch in 2002 and is notable for its high graduation rates and technology focus — were “really happy,” Skipper said, but she was driven into administration in 2013 after seeing the “barriers” that faced her students.
Skipper declined to comment on more recent history, saying, “I’ve been gone seven years … I am not going to make assumptions about what is and isn't going on.” “As a white leader,” Skipper said, “it is imperative for me to build a team that is diverse, talented, that's culturally proficient, linguistically proficient” to build trust and common cause with families of color.