An Interview with New Superintendent Dr. Wagner Marseille, Part 2
Dr. Wagner Marseille is the newly appointed superintendent of the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District. He was interviewed by Strath Haven High School senior (and Swarthmorean summer intern), Morgan McErlean, on Wednesday, September 1. This week’s edition carries the second part of our interview with Dr. Marseille. Read part one.
Dr. Wagner Marseille
Q: What made you want to apply for the job of WSSD Superintendent?
A: I was notified of the opportunity, I was not looking for a position. I had just finished a second five-year contract with Cheltenham, and I was excited. I said to myself, “Oh man, first five years down, the next five are going to be awesome. I know what I’m doing as a superintendent.” And when the opportunity came and someone shared it with me, I started to look deeper into the community and the district and it reminded me so much of Princeton. It reminded me about the expectations; notions about excellence, about rigorous schoolwork, and community. And I realized that this might be a place in which I could be of better service, and support the new type of thinking that the board was looking for.
Q: Before beginning your job as superintendent, what were some problems that you wanted to remedy?
A: I’m still in this investigatory stage, learning. I’ve had the opportunity to speak to a number of students and also with a number of families during my first 60 days. I have had meetings with local officials to get a better understanding of the community. Obviously, I’ve looked at performance data. I think part of the conversation is that we need to determine, what are we really doing well? And then, how can we improve in those particular areas? Also, what are the areas in which we are not reaching our potential, and how do we think differently to change things? We are an extremely rigorous, high performance school system that pushes students to the brink [in the pursuit] of excellence. Some of those who desire to be the best tend to create very unhealthy conditions. It’s ironic because Jake Boyle, who spoke at convocation, made reference to this really unhealthy lifestyle of being an Olympic athlete, the ridiculous amount of hours that you have to put into your craft, and the sacrifices that you have to make in order to get to the Olympics, let alone get on the podium.
I want to try to figure out a way that you can simultaneously [maintain a healthy lifestyle and] continue to strive for excellence, because I believe that you can. Every day you are trying to be better than you were yesterday. But balance that with a healthy lifestyle. Mental health, stress, and anxiety are significant factors in this district, because we’re pushing the envelope in terms of excellence.
It seems to me that we want to be the best at everything. That’s a lofty goal, but it has to be balanced with some intentionality around wellbeing. And there’s also the reality that the promise of the WSSD experience is very different for many students in this district. So, the idea is how do we provide equity, in terms of ensuring that every student gets the [complete] WSSD experience? We know that there are many subgroups of students who feel marginalized. Whether it’s through voice, whether it’s the way they see [or do not see] themselves reflected in the curriculum, whether it’s because the district is producing quantifiable numbers that show students from a particular subgroup are three to four times more likely not to be or be involved in the [educational] process. I think there are opportunities for us to think differently.
I have had a chance to meet some wonderful educators so far. We had a great summer program. When I met with the [teacher’s] union president, I said, “Listen, if the summer teachers are indicative of what the entire staff is going to be like, I’m loving it.” Because it’s—I know it sounds cliche-ish—but it doesn’t always happen. I walked into every summer school classroom and I saw adults who genuinely loved children. And I’m not saying that I didn’t see that at Lower Merion. I’m not saying I didn’t see that at Cheltenham. I did see that. But the thing is, [I saw it in] one classroom after the other, every single day. And I can’t believe it was because they were putting on a show. They didn’t know I was coming in. I am very intentional about going in at different times, [on] different days, to different classrooms, to observe different experiences. Everywhere I went I saw a wonderful group of people who love working with children.
How do we build on that? I know that I live vicariously through students. How do we continue to elevate those who are doing really well? And, those who are not doing well and don’t see themselves within the system—how do we level the playing field, for lack of a better term?
I am very interested in looking at—I’m a big data person—not only what I can count, but also what I can hear and what I can see. I try to triangulate all of that and find meaning. School is about outcomes, and to some extent, certain outcomes are measurable. I’m going to be able to observe the data and see what it means. I also want to talk about what I see, when I walk around the hallways, when I look at the walls, when I look at the documents that students are reading. What does that mean? How does that define who you are and what you hear? I want to know—when I’m walking through the hallways—what kind of conversations am I picking up with students and with staff? When I have these one-on-one meetings, or when I have town hall meetings, I really want to get a sense of what the community wants, what it desires, so that I can shape a strategic vision for how we want to move forward.
Q: You represented Haiti in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, competing in the 110 meter hurdles. How does your experience of being an Olympian translate into what you are doing in your career?
A: As an Olympian, it is really simple for me: having a teacher who believed in me, when I didn’t believe in myself and didn’t think it was possible, that was a powerful thing. I always stress this idea about the power of belief, and how teachers play a fundamental role. The fact is that students will manifest what you deliver. If you expect nothing but excellence, that’s what will happen. But, when there’s a bigger bigotry of low expectation, kids will ride that particular wave. So, having had the opportunity to compete on the biggest stage of my sport, I ask, “are we preparing every Wallingford-Swarthmore student to compete on their biggest stage?” Whatever that may mean for them, because it’s really up to them which stage they are on. But I want to know, have we given all of you the appropriate skills, experiences, dispositions, attitudes, in order to excel? I’m looking forward to unpacking that a little bit during my tenure.
Q: I wanted to ask your thoughts about relying on virtual learning last year. Do you think virtual learning set the district back at all, and if so, how long do you think it will take to catch up?
A: A report from the Pennsylvania Department of Education came out last year about concerns with online learning and its potential for learning loss. We know that there is a summer loss for certain particular subgroups of children, especially those with low socioeconomic status. Especially also when you have the challenge of a technology gap, resulting from who has or doesn’t have internet access, who has or doesn’t have iPads and Chromebooks, or things of that nature that allow access to the curriculum.
I think that the online experience coupled with COVID-19 was absolutely horrific. But, do I believe in the potential positive impacts and benefits of online learning? I think we can support the notion that you can get some really great quality instruction online. I say that because prestigious post-secondary institutions across the country have online programs. One of the hardest courses I took at Penn was an online program. I was like, “wait a minute, this is 10 times more work. I have to write 10 times more papers than if I was physically inside the class.” So I said, “oh, no way. I’ll never do that again.” And so I understand that to some extent online learning can be extremely rigorous. But last year, do I think that online learning set us back? I think unequivocally the data will support that we didn’t grow children academically and, of course, socially and emotionally, the same way—because schooling is a social experience, right? And when you isolate children and put them on a computer, when you have them at a drop of a dime pivot from their traditional learning experience, and then you also ask teachers—as hard as they worked, and they worked their tails off to do that—to pivot their instructional model to an online one, it’s extremely challenging.
Other online programs and online schools, who have been doing it for decades, have a leg up. I do think that we will be looking at this four years from now and assessing how significant the impact was [of online learning during Covid-19]. I believe that there are significant challenges when you put a computer in front of a student and that’s their only learning model. I also believe that, to some extent, some people fared worse than others with the online experience.
Q: Is there anything regarding COVID-19 that you would like residents of the school district to be aware of?
A: Over this summer, I couldn’t believe I was having the same conversations that I had last summer. I felt like I was having déjà vu. By which I mean, conversations about how to return to school with a spike in COVID cases. When we closed in March through June of 2020, we were thinking, “Okay, we’re getting ready for school to open in the fall.” And then COVID just went through the roof and all of a sudden everyone started online.
This year, I’m so glad there are a number of approved vaccinations. I’m thinking vaccinations [will make it possible to get back in school]. But just ast the district starts pulling away from its mitigation factors, trying to get back to normal, we’re hit by the Delta variant. And now we’re right back to where we were, figuring out how we’re going to return to school, and the challenges associated with that. Masking has become a polarized political conversation, unfortunately, that has divided way too many people. [Here in WSSD], we took precautions long before the governor mandated universal masking. We asked, “how do we bring students back in a healthy way, but as close to traditional schooling as possible?” Some parents like [what we are doing], and some parents said we didn’t go far enough. As we started getting closer to school, the numbers started to climb, which concerned me. I thought we needed to maintain universal masking until we can see where this is going. So we moved forward with that decision. I know there are some community members and parents who don’t like it. But it was out of an abundance of caution, because if we didn’t do that, and we started school and a high number of COVID cases appeared, we would need to close down, quarantine a lot of folks, and disrupt the in-person model. We could be going back and forth for a number of months.
So, we are doing a number of things to increase our mitigation factors as it relates to COVID-19. I think universal masking helps significantly. We were already moving in that direction, and now the governor has said masking is mandatory for all public schools, K through 12. [98% of our staff] are vaccinated. Just to make sure that we’re being preventative, we are going to implement assurance testing for those who are not, so twice a week our staff members who are not vaccinated will get tested. I know certain ideologies may not favor vaccination for a myriad of reasons. We are not forcing people to get vaccinated. We’re just saying that if you’re not, we’re going to test you. Also, at the beginning of the year, we’re going to push out a survey to find out how many of our students, who are age-eligible, have received the vaccine. And we’re going to try to find ways to encourage families to get the vaccine. Deb Sweeney, who is our newly appointed lead COVID nurse, shared with me the distribution of our students from grades nine through 12 who are vaccinated. Those numbers are really low. I expected them to be much higher than they were. I need those numbers to be at the 85% mark, comparable to the staff, with the hopes that when the governor, based on what the COVID transmission rates are, says, “Okay, it’s no longer a mandate - school districts can look at their own data to determine what they’re going to do.” Then I can go to families and say, “Hey, we may be able to relax some of our masking procedures because we have 90% plus staff members who are vaccinated, and we also have 90% plus of those students who are eligible.” We will still need to be very careful with those who are younger than 12, who can’t get vaccinated, but I’m optimistic that we’ll find ways to do that.
We are looking at exploring pooled testing for students, but that’s a Herculean lift because we have to figure out, how do you test so many kids? You can’t do it before school. You’ve got to do it during school, but if you do it during school, it impacts your academic day. Do we make it optional? One person asked me, “are you going to mandate universal testing for every student?” I said that’s going to be very difficult. We have 1,300 kids at the high school. If we have to test 1,300 kids, every Monday and every Thursday, that will be really difficult. We could probably do it, but we are [first] looking into ways to get a sense of who is vaccinated. We are going to send out a survey and encourage vaccinations.
Q: What are your top three goals as superintendent? And what is your timeline, if you have a timeline, for accomplishing them?
A: My top priority is to build community—for us to work as a team and for me to get to know as many of the students and staff as possible. Before I start moving into larger traditional superintendent initiatives, I want to know, what do the students really need? What do staff really need? What is the community saying? Second, we will be taking a deep look at what we teach, how we teach it, and how we assess it. I’m a big proponent of what happens inside classrooms. How do we think differently [about our curriculum]? The third priority is talking about inequitable outcomes across the district. I don’t want this to be just a slogan. Way too many school districts just talk about [equity issues]. I’m very outcome oriented. I’m hoping that over my tenure, Wallingford-Swarthmore can do things that have eluded other school systems across the State of Pennsylvania. That includes making sure that all of our students are achieving at the highest level.
