Boston School Committee Interviews Somerville Superintendent Mary Skipper for BPS Top Job

Uncategorized · Meeting of July 20, 2026

Boston School Committee interviews Mary Skipper in first of two public superintendent finalist sessions. The committee, chaired by Jerry Robinson, put Somerville Public Schools Superintendent Mary Skipper through two rounds of questions Monday covering Black student achievement, multilingual learner instruction, special education reform, fiscal management, and school safety, as part of a search that began with 34 candidates before narrowing to two finalists. Skipper, who founded Tech Boston Academy in Dorchester and later led the BPS high school network before moving to Somerville, cited the Calculus Project, the BAM social-emotional program, and a Biogen STEM partnership as concrete evidence of moving the needle for students of color, and said she reduced Somerville's out-of-district special education placements from roughly 130 to approximately 70.

On native language instruction, she was candid about her limits: "I have not been directly involved where a school system has gone from being a sheltered English immersion into a native." The second finalist, Dr. Tommy Chang, Region 1 School Superintendent at BPS, was scheduled to interview the following day, with a final committee vote set for June 29 at 5 p.m.

In the full story:

• Who Was There
• Organizations And Documents Referenced
• The complete report — 2,881 words

Source: the Uncategorized meeting of July 20, 2026, reported from the official video recording and transcript.