The Meet and Greet with the Superintendent was an opportunity for parents and people in the neighborhood to meet and discuss matters along with issues within schools and academic issues in our community with Superintendent John Oteri. On January 24, at the Malden High School Library families and faculty were present to discuss their questions and potential concerns.
With these types of events both parties of concerned parents and the school administration benefit. It is a win-win situation with this event, parents can give their own opinions and their to the school board, and the school board will know what they can improve to better satisfy the people in our community.
Many topics were discussed at this event, such as Malden’s education and school system and what can be improved upon. Many parents liked how students now have good accessibility to classes such as AP and BHCC classes at the Malden High School. In addition, parents commented that the Malden school community has a healthy atmosphere of inclusion and diversity. But, many parents were concerned on the issue of inconsistency of classes between schools. For example, the foreign language department is not provided at the Ferryway School. In addition, special education in certain schools are different. Many parents expressed their concerns of their children going to a certain school that provides the education that their child needs, even though they live closer to another school.
Superintendent Oteri was very open-minded to everything the parents had to say. Oteri wants people to know that “[families and faculties] are welcome to speak their minds, and [the school’s department] are more than willing to work on it”. He later on explained that he wants to be a good leader that the community can depend on. Oteri stated “a good leader is someone who’s visible, someone who’s approachable, and someone who’s successful”, and he wants to be that kind of a leader to the community.
Oteri “[thinks] [that] too often school administrations operate in the back, or separately...in order for us, as a community, to be better we need to have a better relationship [and] partnership with parents and students” Superintendent Oteri stated.
