Hi, I’m Henry Gwazda, and I’ve been proud to call Marblehead home for the past 15 years. My wife and I moved here, bought a house, and have since welcomed two amazing daughters into our lives. My oldest is at Brown School, and my youngest will be joining her next year — so I’m deeply invested in the future of our schools.

Professionally, I have a background in marketing and graphic design, which means I’m always thinking creatively and strategically, and I need to make decisions based on a wide range of stakeholder feedback — skills I believe would serve me well on the School Committee. But more than that, I love this community — the people, the sense of connection, and the history. That’s what makes Marblehead so special, and it’s why I’m passionate about giving back.

I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.

If you see me around town, please don't hesitate to chat with me, or find my contact information at the bottom of this page.

What I Believe

Value for Taxpayers

Investing tax dollars in our schools and our students' futures is essential in any town in America. I support fully funding our schools, paying our teachers and school staff a fair and competitive wage, and keeping our schools and facilities in first-class condition. In Marblehead, we have specific tax challenges that we face when deciding how to fund our schools, and sometimes we need to pass overrides to keep our schools competitive and fund our children's future.

It's important to me that the people of this town feel their money is being managed responsibly, and they are informed about where that money is being spent and why. There are many instances of the current School Committee not meeting this standard of responsibility, including the High School roof project proposal, legal and public relations fees, and firing our former Superintendent, John Buckey, without a suitable explanation.

If elected, I will ensure the community knows how their money is being spent. When we need to ask for more money, you'll know why we are asking, and that you can trust us to spend it effectively.

Student Success

Anyone elected to serve on the School Committee has made a commitment to our students to provide them with the best education and experience we can provide them, and has a responsibility to uphold this commitment in everything they do.

The stated mission of the Marblehead School Committee is to foster in our students a passion for learning, and to provide a safe and nurturing environment in which they can develop the values, knowledge, and skills needed to achieve full potential in their personal, social and work lives, and become contributing members of society.

I believe in this mission, but there is still a lot of work to do in order to succeed.

We need to listen to our educators and provide them everything we can to help them succeed. We need to be sure the schools are properly staffed and they have all the resources they need to provide a safe and functional environment for our students. These are our front-line workers and they need our support.

I want to find ways to be competitive with the best schools in the Commonwealth and provide our students with a first-rate education that will bring them success for the rest of their lives, while also providing a supportive and enriching environment that they will look back on fondly.8

Community Engagement

One of the School Committee's primary responsibilities is to provide the community with a voice in our schools. This is exactly why is it an elected position. But that responsibility doesn't end after election day.

The current School Committee has not been effectively listening to the community, the teachers, or the students. They've also failed at communicating back to the community.

The way they handled issues such as the High School roof project, the flag policy, the teachers strike, and staffing issues in the administration, including Superintendent John Buckey, show a complete lack of transparency and communication that needs to be addressed.

In February 2024, 140 Marblehead residents gave the School Committee a failing grade, and almost 800 people signed a petition agreeing with them. In November 2024, 1,370 people signed a petition saying they had lost confidence in the School Committee. We need to make a change.

As representatives of the community, we need to listen when people speak. As decision-makers for our students' educations, we need to be clear about our decisions, and communicate why we made them. I consider these responsibilities to be absolutely central to running our schools.

Current Issues

Upheaval in the School Administration

Marblehead High School Roof

Our High School needs a new roof. The issues with the roof are creating an unsafe and unhealthy environment for our students. It also reflects poorly on our investment in our students to have leaks, mold, and ceiling tiles falling. It is essential that we approve the funds for this project.

However, the School Committee already asked for $5.3 million for the roof, which was approved at Town Meeting in 2022. This project never happened. There are a lot of excuses and claims as to what happened with this project, but clearly there were issues with the request made in 2022, and now we need to approve an $8.6 million debt exclusion, which includes the roof and new HVAC units.

While I unequivocally support securing the funds for this project, the sentiment that I hear in town is hesitation that the same people who mismanaged the original project are responsible for managing the new one. There was concern at Town Meeting that this project still wasn't fully explored. People are willing to give the schools money, they just want to be sure that we can be trusted with it, and we know what we're doing. I'm hoping a change in the School Committee will assure people that it will be done right this time.

Now that the debt exclusion has passed Town Meeting, I urge you to vote in favor of fixing the MHS roof.

Flag Policy

The current School Committee's insistence on spending 18 months developing a flag policy is, frankly, baffling to many in this community. While making policies for our district is a primary responsibility of the School Committee, this is an issue that is best left in the hands of the administration, as it has been throughout the history of Marblehead schools.

I am so proud of this community for getting involved and making their voices heard. Your engagement is inspiring. Being a student at our schools is much more than academics. It's a time when you make lifelong friends and connections, discover who you are, and find a community that supports you. In the public forums it was clear that flags and representation are important. I'm particularly proud of the students who stepped up and created a very thorough and reasonable proposal, which was reviewed by legal experts. These students embodied the values of being engaged and active members of society.

This policy is both poorly written and completely unnecessary. I urge anyone in this town to walk around the school and look at all the different flags and banners hanging on the walls. Ask yourself if the flag policy, as it was approved, applies to these flags. We hang a banner for Swampscott in the Field House, and they are our bitter rivals. At best, this policy is not clear. At worst, this policy seems to be intended to ban two specific flags: the Black Lives Matter and Pride flags. If so, this is censorship by the School Committee, and makes us vulnerable to lawsuits.

The School Committee asked for our feedback and heard overwhelming support from the public for allowing students to fly the flags of their choice. However, in the end, the only opinions they acted on were their own. This is not the representation that we deserve.

We need to go back to the way flags were handled in our schools for hundreds of years: leave it up to the principals and administration to manage, let them do their jobs, and get the School Committee focused on its primary responsibilities.

Teacher Contract Negotiations

Allowing the contract negotiations with school employees and educators reach the point where our teachers went on strike was unacceptable. This didn't happen all in one day. There were many opportunities over an extended period of time to resolve these issues and reach a fair contract. School Committees all over the Commonwealth are able to do this successfully, but our School Committee failed us, our educators, and our students. The way this was handled was frustrating and demoralizing for everyone involved, and does not reflect the community values that make Marblehead great. Most importantly, it negatively affected the students and set a bad example from the people who are meant to be our leaders.

We saw a massive outpouring of support for our teachers during the strike. I was there holding signs, delivering food, and supporting the negotiations at the High School, along with scores of other members of the community, as well as the students most affected by the strike. Everyone was working toward getting the students back in school and providing our educators with fair and competitive compensation that meets the standard of the education we want our students to receive. The School Committee was unwilling to negotiate in good faith, and instead seemed to be more concerned with talking to their lawyers and PR firms and exploring ways to punish union leaders, rather than coming back with reasonable counter-proposals. The committee spent $152,286 in legal fees on the Unit A negotiations alone. In the end, after threatening a painful override to pay for the new contracts, we had the money the whole time, and no override would be required for the new contracts. This process was mishandled from start to finish, and we need to make changes to the School Committee to be sure it doesn't happen again.

We've never received a satisfying explanation for why John Buckey was removed as Superintendent, less than two months after a unanimously approved evaluation by the School Committee where he was rated at "proficient" in all the evaluated standards, and having met or made significant progress toward the district's goals. There have been attempts to provide some reasoning behind their abrupt decision, but they haven't justified such drastic action. The whole thing is suspicious, and evidently based on issues outside of the committee's evaluation criteria. This decision not only created confusion and upheaval in our school administration, but it cost the town a lot of money in compensation and legal/PR fees, and damaged our credibility. The reasons for that decision should have been clear. Two years later, and we still don't have a permanent Superintendent in place.

Five-Year Plan

The five year plan developed for our district ends in June of 2026. We need to start building a new set of goals now. We need to create a set of goals that are specific and measurable, so they can be used as a guidance tool over the next five years. For example: one goal reads “By June 30, 2026, the Marblehead Public Schools will have equitable staff compensation.” This isn’t an easily measurable goal, and I’m sure the SC and the MEA disagree as to whether that goal has been met. I see my role as gathering the relevant feedback and data from teachers, students, administrators, and parents, building real goals that address their issues and concerns, and keeping the SC and administration on-task and empowering progress towards those goals.

20% Turnover Rate

Marblehead Public Schools experienced an unprecedented and concerning turnover rate in their teaching staff of more than 20% from the last school year to this one. The turnover rate is the biggest red flag in our district, although it doesn’t appear to be on the list of flags that the current SC cares about. Turnover rate of more than 20% should have set off alarms, the way it would with any business. This is a challenging question for this term on the SC, since the contract was already negotiated. I think the three biggest reasons teachers are leaving Marblehead are pay, disrespect from the SC, and stress.

So right now we need to focus on solutions to the issues with respect and stress. I won’t dwell on respect here, since I spoke to that in an earlier response, but there are things we need to do to address stress. Fixing staffing issues, particularly with special educators and paraprofessionals, would mean better safety and working conditions for all teachers. This is the most common complaint that I’ve heard in my discussions with teachers. One special educator I know has a 40-student case load between Glover and Brown. This is a major resourcing issue. Paying better attention to providing better services to special needs students would reduce the workload and stress on our teachers across the board, and would help with job satisfaction. Facility maintenance would also create better working conditions and a safer environment.

We also need to gather and listen to feedback from our teachers more effectively. Again, our educators are our boots on the ground everyday in the schools, and you will be most attuned to issues that need to be addressed. Having those earnest conversations is essential. We need to build solutions into our goals and stay focused on our plan.

Legal Representation

We have had some issues with legal representation over the past few years. Our law firm dropped us as a client in 2023, and then the committee hired a new law firm without doing their due diligence to seek out and review a slate of potential candidates. While the School Committee is exempt from typical procurement procedures when hiring a law firm, it would have been more responsible to conduct a proper search.

We've spent a tremendous amount of money on legal fees in the past two years with the issues with our Superintendent, the contract negotiations, and the flag policy. Numerous independent lawyers who reviewed the flag policy that the School Committee's legal counsel submitted have pointed out glaring legal issues. That's after spending $334,734 on legal counsel in Fiscal Year 2024.

It's time to do a proper review of our legal counsel to be sure we're being properly represented, and we're not wasting precious funds that could be going towards our facilities, our educators, and our students.

Conflicts of Interest

I am aware that there is some concern about my wife's position in the Marblehead schools being an undisclosed conflict of interest. I understand being concerned about this, and I'm happy to talk about it. I'll address the "undisclosed" part first. I am very proud of Marisa and the work she does in the schools. I think it's important for our elected officials to be open and honest, and I voluntarily disclosed my wife's connection to the schools publicly in a local paper when I pulled my nomination papers.

So I'll be clear here about Marisa's work in the schools. She works as an on-call building sub at Brown School. This means she works anywhere and everywhere that they need her, and they really do need her help as much as she can give it. She does not have a contract with the schools, and is not a member of the MEA teachers' union, nor is she eligible to be a member. She is also the garden teacher at Brown and Village schools, and she is not employed through the schools for that work. That work is provided by the Brown School PTO and SPUR.

Before I officially became a candidate I spoke with the lawyers at the State Ethics Commission about conflicts of interests, eligibility, and what I could and couldn't do as a member of the School Committee. There are some short forms I would need to file, and I would need to recuse myself from discussions and approvals of line-items directly related to my wife's work. I would still be allowed to vote on the entire budget or proposal.

I do not see this as a conflict of interest. I see it as an appropriate level of interest, the same way having a child in the schools or owning taxable property in town would be. I would never let my wife's position in the schools, or my child's personal experience, or the bottom line of my own personal financials affect the decisions I make on the School Committee. If you feel differently, or have any concerns you'd like to discuss, I urge you to reach out to me directly.

My Responses to the Marblehead Current

What are your goals for the next three years should you be elected?

My primary goal is to rebuild trust and be a vocal advocate for our schools. We need the town to know that the School Committee can manage its core responsibilities, not get distracted by hot-button issues, and trust the administration to do their jobs. We need our educators to trust that the School Committee is their partner, not their adversary, and they can rely on us to listen to them and advocate for funding and resources. And we need the students to know that we are effective stewards of their education and personal growth. We need to keep focused on a specific and measurable set of goals that reflects the primary responsibilities of the School Committee and the concerns of the students, our educators, and the town. We owe it to our kids to provide them with effective governance for a successful and enriching experience in our schools.

After the turbulence of the last three years, what issues would you have handled differently, and how?

I respect the incumbent committee members for volunteering their efforts, but I would have done things differently. There were many mistakes made during the teachers’ contract negotiations. The biggest was damaging the relationship between the town and our educators. It was a missed opportunity for joint advocacy for school funding and to collaborate on a shared financial challenge. The failure to effectively manage the MHS roof project is not only a project oversight mistake, but it illustrates a larger issue. Many in town want to fund the schools, but don’t think the School Committee can manage that money. I think the insistence on creating a flag policy was misguided. We should leave that to the school administrators. The subcommittee asked for feedback, and the community, the teachers, and, particularly, the students stepped up and were ignored in favor of bad advice from their lawyer. Our town deserves better representation.

What skills and experience would you bring/add to the committee?

I have roots in public education through my own schooling and teacher parents, and with my daughters in our school system (one heading to Kindergarten). My wife is also actively involved as a substitute and garden teacher. I'm deeply invested in our schools' success. The skills I’ve developed in 20+ years as a graphic designer translate directly to the School Committee. Design thinking means understanding needs, challenging assumptions, and finding innovative solutions. My job is problem-solving, presenting and defending proposals, gathering and acting on feedback, and managing projects and timelines—skills essential for the School Committee. I have experience setting and managing goals and deadlines for me and my team. Leading design teams for over a decade has also taught me how to manage, evaluate, and advocate effectively. These experiences prepare me well for the challenges ahead on the committee.

Given orders from the federal government to restrict DEI, where do you stand on diversity, equity and inclusion curriculum and programs in Marblehead schools?

I value DEI in our schools. There is strength in recognizing, valuing, and discussing our differences. This is especially meaningful in an academic setting. Exposure to diverse perspectives enriches the learning experience, broadens understanding, and helps students develop critical thinking skills. We rely on equity in education to ensure that students with unique needs get the specific resources they need to overcome barriers and succeed. We want to foster an inclusive school culture where everyone feels a sense of belonging and feels safe to express themselves. Effectively promoting DEI in our schools leads to improved academic outcomes, better social and emotional development, increased engagement, less bullying and discrimination, and prepares our students for the challenges of the diverse world they are graduating into.

My Responses to the Marblehead Educators Association (MEA)

What is your personal story? Why are you seeking this office?

I have grown increasingly frustrated with the School Committee over the past few years. I’ve watched them make a series of unforced errors, and I’m concerned for the future of Marblehead Schools. I have a daughter in 2nd grade at Brown School (and another due to attend Kindergarten in the fall). I am personally deeply invested in the success of the schools, and by extension the success of my kids. My wife is a building sub at Brown, and the garden teacher at Brown and Village schools, so I hear first-hand information about issues in the schools. I joined this race to get the School Committee refocused on its primary responsibilities and to get the schools back on track to success.

Any additional information about you we should know?

I have been living in Marblehead for over 12 years, and I’m proud of our town. I want to be just as proud of our schools. I am a graphic designer and team manager and I’ve been working for marketing departments in biotech companies in MA for 12 years. My job requires creative “design thinking” and coming up with innovative solutions to challenging problems. I also need to advocate for resources, training, and evaluation for my employees, and create team goals and plans. I’m good at listening, and I’ve always received supportive evaluations as a team leader and people manager.

What is your vision for the Marblehead Public Schools during next year and beyond? If elected, what do you believe your role is in making that vision a reality?

My biggest goal is to keep the School Committee focused. The five year plan developed for our district ends in June of 2026. We need to start building a new set of goals now. The current goals are very broad, so we need to create goals that are specific and measurable. For example: one goal reads “By June 30, 2026, the Marblehead Public Schools will have equitable staff compensation.” This isn’t a measurable goal, and I’m sure the SC and the MEA disagree as to whether that goal has been met. I see my role as gathering the relevant feedback and data from teachers, students, administrators, and parents, building real goals that address their issues and concerns, and keeping the SC and administration on-task and empowering progress towards those goals.

My personal vision for the schools is focused on advocating for better funding, fully staffing our schools, especially where urgent change is needed, and responsibility and accountability on the SC for policies and financial oversight. We also need to do a better job soliciting feedback and addressing issues. We can’t actively ignore our community, our teachers, and our students when we are running the SC. We can’t waste our time on distracting hot-button issues. We need to stay focused on our goals and prioritize what’s important. Beyond the primary and specific responsibilities of the SC, we need to put our trust in our administrators and educators and allow them to do their jobs.

Do you believe our schools are fully funded? Why or why not? If not, what will you do to ensure Marblehead Public Schools receives the necessary funds to remain amongst the best in the Commonwealth?

No, our schools aren’t fully funded. We’ve been operating with level-services or reduced-funding budgets for too long. The value of a good education is widely valued in Marblehead, and I think that having a strong advocate for school funding on the SC would help voters in the town understand the connection between strong budgets and strong education. I want to explore a budget proposal that fully meets our needs, and do our due diligence to get the town to accept it, even if it means an override. The current SC has indicated that they are not allowed to advocate for funding in an override, and not only are they wrong about that, but they should be our loudest cheerleaders for funding our schools. I will always be publicly vocal about the need to better fund our schools.

Part of fixing the budget is fixing the glaring issues on the SC, and the town’s dissatisfaction with them. People who want to fund our schools don’t want to send more money to this committee, which caused the last school override proposal to fail. We need to show that we are responsible stewards of the taxpayers money, which means being more active in tracking and managing spending. If we can demonstrate financial responsibility now, we are more likely to get an override passed in the future.

What is your impression of our facilities? How will you address any concerns you may have?

The MHS roof is a well-known issue, and I’m supporting the roof project at Town Meeting. Without rehashing all the issues with that project here, it does demonstrate that the current school committee is not paying attention to issues with our facilities. When I spoke with John Robidoux, he talked about the importance of maintenance. I think this is a good metaphor for a lot of the problems we face in our schools, but it’s especially important to our facilities. The SC already engages with the facilities staff, but they could be doing a better job, as evidenced by the issues with the roof project.

This pairs nicely with my plans to create achievable and measurable goals for the SC, and to check on them regularly, as well as being better at managing budgets and being responsible for how money is being spent. I want to empower our facilities staff, and advocate for funds whenever possible, especially at the State level, and focus on maintaining our facilities before minor issues become major issues. We owe that to our students.

Do you think a flag policy is necessary for Marblehead Public Schools? If necessary, what are some key elements? If not, why not?

I think the flag policy should be left up to the administrators, not the School Committee. It’s a perfect example of overreach by the SC, seemingly to address their own personal issues. It doesn’t reflect the will of the parents, teachers, and students of Marblehead. However, if officially passed, and now we have to deal with it.

I see three possible solutions. My preference would be to simplify the policy, and leave it to the administrators to manage. It worked that way for a long time. The other option would be to change the policy to the version the students submitted. The third option would be to use the current policy to allow the flags that people are saying are meaningful and move on to more important business.

How do you plan to actively engage with parents, educators, and other stakeholders to gather diverse perspectives and ensure inclusive decision-making within the school committee?

I know this is a cliche, but my door is always open. I pride myself on my ability to accept feedback, even if it’s difficult, and find solutions to address issues that are brought to my attention. This is what I do every day at my day job as a graphic designer. It may not sound relevant to the work of the SC, but the primary responsibility in my job is delivering a product that everyone is happy with, even in the face of contradictory feedback. Challenging problems require creative solutions. Good solutions are built from feedback and information.

There are many avenues of communication already in place to bring the voice of the community to the SC. There are official methods, such as open comment at a School Committee meeting, or contact through email. But I would also love for people to stop me on the streets or in the grocery store to discuss the issues. Give me a call or text any time. I would love to come into the schools to talk with students and teachers. I would love to hold forums, especially around goal-setting and a five year plan. Starting a conversation with the SC is not difficult. The challenge is that the current SC doesn’t engage in the conversation. Feedback is meaningless without action, and I plan to fix that on the School Committee.

The debate around the flag policy is an example of how not to do things. I personally oppose the flag policy, but no matter where you stand on flags, we can all agree that the process was broken. The SC solicited feedback from the community, the teachers, and the students, and everyone took time and effort to tell the SC what they thought. I’m particularly proud of the students here. However, in the end, most committee members only seemed to be willing to listen to their lawyers and themselves. It was disrespectful to ask the public for input, and then completely ignore it in favor of legal advice.

The School Committee is meant to represent the public. It is not someone’s personal soap box.

Educators over the past year felt disrespected, unsafe, and ignored which led to a strike. How will you use your office to repair relationships between educators, management, and the school committee?

One of the main reasons I decided to run for School Committee was to improve the relationship between the SC and our educators. I agree completely with the way the teachers feel. My goal is to turn this around. I will be sure that our educators feel like the SC listens to them. I trust our teachers to know more about the schools than I do, and when they speak it’s my duty to listen, the same way I trust my kid’s teachers to provide the best guidance for her development. I value and appreciate everyone who works for our schools. I want to create a set of specific and measurable goals that address school safety, advocate for better resources, and rebuild and maintain open communication, and then stay focused on those goals by checking progress regularly. I don’t pretend to be an expert in what the teachers need to repair this relationship, but when things are this broken it’s important to listen and then act upon that feedback. I am ready to have that conversation today, tomorrow, and everyday.

How would you approach finding a balance between collaboration and oversight with the Superintendent and school administration when it comes to controversial issues (e.g. school start times, school safety, recess, non-student-facing positions, curriculum decisions, etc.)?

The School Committee needs to empower the administration. We are not meant to be in conflict, we all need to be rowing in the same direction. There are policies that the SC needs to be involved in, and there are policies that are best left in the hands of the schools. When the SC reviews policies we need to have a keen eye for this distinction. When we do need to set policy it needs to be simple and clear so that it can be implemented properly by the administration.

We need to be willing to engage in meaningful conversation regarding controversial issues. Let’s identify the problem, gather perspectives from all sides, and develop a compromise that works for everyone. And we need to do it quickly. Recognizing that wanting what’s best and knowing what’s best are very different things is a good place to start. I know this sounds naive, but when we can come together without egos, and with the success of our students as our primary concern, I think we can navigate controversial issues successfully.

Marblehead Public Schools experienced an unprecedented and concerning turnover rate in their teaching staff of more than 20% from last school year to this one. As a school committee member, what would you publicly advocate for in order to attract and retain dedicated and highly-qualified educators in our town?

The turnover rate is the biggest red flag in our district, although it doesn’t appear to be on the list of flags that the current SC cares about. Turnover rate of more than 20% should have set off alarms, the way it would with any business. This is a challenging question for this term on the SC, since the contract was already negotiated. I think the three biggest reasons teachers are leaving Marblehead are pay, disrespect from the SC, and stress.

So right now we need to focus on solutions to the issues with respect and stress. I won’t dwell on respect here, since I spoke to that in an earlier response, but there are things we need to do to address stress. Fixing staffing issues, particularly with special educators and paraprofessionals, would mean better safety and working conditions for all teachers. This is the most common complaint that I’ve heard in my discussions with teachers. Paying better attention to providing better services to special needs students would reduce the workload and stress on our teachers across the board, and would help with job satisfaction. Facility maintenance would also create better working conditions and a safer environment.

We also need to gather and listen to feedback from our teachers more effectively. Again, our educators are our boots on the ground everyday in the schools, and you will be most attuned to issues that need to be addressed. Having those earnest conversations is essential. We need to build solutions into our goals and stay focused on our plan.

My Responses to the Marblehead Special Education Parent Advisory Council (SEPAC)

What is your vision for Marblehead Schools over the next three years? Specifically, what two to three goals do you have and how would you contribute to realizing them?

I have two primary goals for the School Committee, which I think of as umbrella goals that will lead to success in other areas.

I want to be sure that the committee focuses on its primary mission and builds a measurable set of goals to help guide the district through these responsibilities in the future. We need long-term planning and short-term action. We need to encourage stability in our district after the past few turbulent years. Allow the administration, educators and staff to do their jobs and make the School Committee boring again so we don’t read about it every week in the paper. We have real, but solvable, issues in our district that need the committee’s attention.

My second goal is to repair the relationship the School Committee has with our educators, students, and community and rebuild trust. I want to form a coalition that reflects the concerns and experience of all the stakeholders in our district. I want the committee to be a place where people feel heard, and are eager to share their views and concerns. We need a strong relationship with the experts and advocates in our education system, like you. We need to accept that we don’t know everything about what is best for our schools and be willing to listen to people with good insights and take action based on that feedback. We need to be the loudest advocates for better funding. With the failure of past overrides, it’s essential that we position the committee as responsible and trustworthy. People should be proud to fund our schools, but they will need to be convinced that we have made an effective proposal, and that we can be trusted to manage the money we’re asking for.

How can the School Committee help bridge the divide between general education and special education for students, staff, and administration, and, in some cases, the community as a whole?

I think it’s important to dispel the notion that there is a divide between special education and general education. Every student has specific needs, so every student lands somewhere on this spectrum. The students with more needs are still our students and deserve opportunities, just as we provide opportunities to our most gifted learners. This isn’t to say that we push special ed aside in favor of general ed, but that we recognize the relationship between the two, and how investment in special ed leads to better outcomes across the board for both teachers and students.

Special education budgets seem complex and some communities have been torn apart when it seems that the costs impact general education resources. What are your thoughts about how to ensure that we manage the challenges in ways that maintain support for special education students?

I see this question as a continuation of question 2. We need to do a better job of socializing the impact of investing in special ed on the broader success of our schools, as well as the inverse impact that a lack of special ed resources has on general education. I think we have an opportunity to show how better special education resources result in lower out-of-district tuition costs, which is a real and tangible dollar amount. For better or worse, we’ve had some high-visibility news items in town that highlight the challenges of special education. I’m hoping that the silver lining is that it’s illustrated to the community the importance of funding better resources. I don’t want this community to be torn apart. I see it as an opportunity to unite on a shared challenge. It’s our duty on the School Committee to help the public understand the special education budget and how that budget isn’t in conflict with the general education budget, but in fact supports it. We need our School Committee to be better advocates.

How do you handle disagreements with peers and coworkers? What techniques do you use when trying to convince a team to try an alternative approach to solving a problem?

As a graphic designer, disagreements are intentionally baked into the process of my day-to-day work. Proposing and defending my ideas, and then adapting them based on stakeholder feedback is the essence of what I do every day. I find that truly digging deeply into the issues, incorporating multiple sources of feedback, and relying on data, not opinions, leads to better outcomes. I have thick skin for criticism, and I don’t take things personally. It is possible to have disagreement without conflict. These are not characteristics of some of the current School Committee members. Anyone who has watched a committee open meeting can see that. I’m hoping to change that, and I’ver already contacted some current committee members to let them know I was ready to work with them.

What do you think are the educational differences between inclusion - as we currently know it - and an equitable and inclusive culture? What is your view on how an equitable and inclusive culture could impact our students and their learning?

Equity means being sure that everyone has the same access to opportunities. I know there has been a push-back against this nationally, but merit-based approaches have no place in a public school system whose very mission is to provide equity. I think equity is our duty. Sometimes that means inclusion, but we need to be careful about painting with broad strokes. Inclusion without support is abandonment, so we need to be sure we are advocating for the resources to support that.

I think that culture is an essential consideration when looking at our schools. If we focus only on academics then we are missing the point, and not being fair to our students. I want our students to have an equitable experience in our schools, but they need to also be accepted, respected, and valued in our schools. To me, this is the essence of inclusive culture. If we can be compassionate, not just in our hearts, but in our actions, we can achieve the goals of equity and inclusion, and give the students a sense of belonging in our schools.

Contribute

It's important to create as much name recognition as I can and spread my message before the election on June 10th. I'm accepting donations to post as many yard signs as I possibly can. Venmo contributions are capped at $50 per individual. If you'd like to write a check, email me and I will send you my mailing address.

Contact Me

Reach out to discuss your vision for Marblehead schools and how we can work together for a better future for our students.

If you want a yard sign to show your support for changes to the School Committee, please let me know your address and I'll drop one off. Thanks!

Call or Text

Email

henrygwazda@gmail.com