Lynn Public Schools Superintendent Evonne Alvarez is prioritizing connecting with and supporting the district’s teachers.

In a recent interview with The Item, Alvarez announced that she plans to launch a teacher-superintendent cabinet in January.

“The faculty is in the process of selecting one teacher – it doesn’t have to be the union representative from that building – to represent them,” Alvarez said. “Once a month, we’ll have this meeting where we’ll have an agenda, and we’ll talk through a number of issues or things they want to raise.”

She said that the new cabinet will help her connect with teachers and better understand their issues.

“The teacher-superintendent cabinet will give me an opportunity to interact with them outside the classroom and have that input of teacher voice, which is crucial to being able to make the right decisions for teachers and students,” Alvarez said. “It’s really about never seeing yourself as anything but a teacher. That’s basically what I do. I try to stay as connected as possible with them.”

She explained that the cabinet setting will create a more comfortable setting to interact with teachers as opposed to the regular classroom observations that she does.

“When you’re a colleague educator and you walk into someone’s classroom, you’re supposed to be unintrusive,” Alvarez said. “That is sometimes a strange feeling for the person in the classroom delivering instruction. Those are things that are very different in the social setting.”

Another way to better support teachers is to make sure professional development is effective.

Alvarez said that professional development can be complicated and that there are always time constraints.

She added that she wants to find what is effective for teachers and avoid ineffective professional development.

“To me, that translates to disrespecting teachers,” she said. “I would never disrespect a teacher. I am a teacher. It’s essential for them to have a voice.”

Another issue Alvarez hopes to address is teacher absenteeism, which she said has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic.

She said a districtwide survey of teachers conducted at the end of the 2022-23 school year gave administrators a lot of information on the issues teachers were experiencing, including burnout and exhaustion.

“We’re working diligently to make sure we have a process and procedures in place to support what’s happening in the classroom,” Alvarez said. “When we don’t, that’s when teachers become exhausted. They’re demoralized. They’re overworked.”

Low teacher pay is another contributing factor.

“Our teachers do not get paid enough, and we need to find solutions to that,” Alvarez said.