The Sandwich school committee in March appointed Joe Maruszczak as superintendent following Pamela Gould's retirement after six years, halfway through her contract.
Maruszczak started his career in education 32 years ago as a high school chemistry teacher. He was superintendent of Mendon-Upton Regional Schools for 10 years until last summer, when he co-founded the bilingual Nuestro Mundo Public Charter School in Providence for English Language Learners.
Patrick Flanary: I found it interesting that two-thirds of students at your charter school are English Language Learners, but fewer than 1% of Sandwich public school students are. Is that too broad a gap in diversity?
Joe Maruszczak, Ed.D.: It's reflective, obviously, of the demographics of the community. And those demographics of Providence versus Sandwich, it's apples and oranges.
PF: Talk about those apples and oranges. What have you identified as the greatest need for Sandwich public schools?
JM: I would say, for lack of a better term, sustainability — looking at the programs and services that kids need long-term, knowing that there is a finite amount of resources. Sandwich has the highest [property] tax rate of any community on the Cape. So [we need] a dynamic strategic plan that is very forward-thinking and very visionary and transparent so that, come budget time, there's no surprises.
PF: When it comes to budgets, are you identifying priorities when it comes to how to spend that money?
JM: What I'm going to do is develop and publicize a formal entry plan. I think initially I have to do a great deal of listening to summarize the state of affairs.
PF: That said, what would you say, broadly speaking, is your vision?
JM: I think the priority in Sandwich moving forward has to be assessing where we are with regard to learning loss due to the disruption that we've had over the last two years, and also the tremendous amount of social and emotional needs that our students have across the grade level. I think we're finding that part of this disruption really has had some significant effects as far as how kids are operating on a daily basis. While we're emerging out of this pandemic, we can't have the assumption that all kids are resilient and there aren't going to be consequences after the fact.
PF: Did the two-year shift to broader technology at home undo some of the fundamental things you and I learned as kids?
JM: I view it more in the context of socialization. Maybe to a certain degree before the pandemic, we took a lot of these pieces for granted. There's been gaps in socialization and teaching kids normative skills. In touching base with particularly elementary school teachers in Sandwich, they basically said, "Look, we needed the whole first quarter or two quarters of the school year to teach the little ones basic social skills."
Some of the students we've had the greatest challenges with have been our middle school students. I think about my sixth-graders; the last time they had a full year that was normal and without disruption was as third-graders. I strongly believe that kids are very, very resilient, but I don't think we can underestimate some of the effects that might be long-term and sustained.
PF: COVID cases are gradually rising again. Sandwich public schools were the first on the Cape to drop face-masks.
JM: I certainly hope that face-masks will not be returning, quite frankly, but I think as we've seen through this entire pandemic experience, sometimes it's day-to-day, it's week-to-week. So I think we have to be super-flexible, I think we have to be adaptable.
PF: What was the moment where a move to Cape Cod hit you? What's your connection to the region?
JM: In conversations with my wife I refer to it as the Goldilocks District, in the sense that it's just right. It feels right. The sense that I get from the professional staff, the leadership, the families — it's a community that deeply values education and instilling that sense of community in kids.
PF: What did you hate about school growing up, and how did that shape your approach to education?
JM: Unfortunately I was the type of kid who learned how to master what I refer to as the Game of School: I knew how to study for tests, I knew to give my teachers exactly what they wanted to hear. That's not the type of education I want for my kids. I want my kids to think. I want them to be hands-on. I want them to apply their knowledge and their skills. And that's not easy work, it's very challenging. But I think that's what our kids need.
