Maria Pontes just started her first year as permanent superintendent. Here are her plans.

FALL RIVER — After a year as Interim Superintendent of Schools, Maria Pontes has stepped into the permanent role in the district she’s been with for nearly 40 years.

“I’m not about a title, per se. I’m gonna roll up my sleeves and do the work,” she said.

Pontes is in her 37th year with Fall River Public Schools. A career-long educator, she taught at Kuss Middle School, then became vice principal at Greene Elementary School, then later served as principal at Doran Community School, Kuss and B.M.C. Durfee High School. She became one of the district’s assistant superintendents in 2020.

The school committee appointed Pontes as interim superintendent last summer, following the departure of former superintendent Matthew Malone. Earlier this year, they opted to appoint her to be the superintendent.

Her four-year contract, which became effective on July 1, starts at a base salary of $210,000 per year, with a scheduled $6,000 increase each year.

'Every time we stop and restart, we lose ground'

Last year, Pontes said she wasn’t certain whether she’d want to become full superintendent. But over the course of the year, she said, she began to feel like more disruption and change could set the district back.

“I think every time we stop and restart, we lose ground," she said. "I’m not saying I have all the answers, but I thought we were doing good work.”

Looking forward in the school year that started this week, Pontes said the pandemic continues to be a major challenge facing the district. Students are dealing with learning loss and additional social and emotional challenges compared to before COVID struck.

“Isolation took a toll on adults as well as students. And it’s gonna take a long time to recover,” Pontes said.

National teacher shortage: Fall River schools hired over 130 teachers this summer. They're looking for dozens more

But last year, she watched students and educators begin the process of recovering from serious disruptions caused by the pandemic.

“From the beginning of the year to the end, we saw some marked differences. Kids became more settled,” she said.

The district is teaching fully in person, with no masks required, although people are encouraged to continue with measures like hand washing.

“We are open for business,” Pontes said. “It looks like a typical year.”

How Fall River schools can improve performance

Under her leadership, the Fall River public schools will continue to face the challenge of improving their performance. The district often scores relatively low on metrics like MCAS scores and graduation rates compared to other districts in Massachusetts, although many of their metrics are trending upward. More than 86% of the district’s students are considered “high need” and about 81% are designated as low income, according to state data.

“We have the conditions to be a high-performing district,” Pontes said. “We don’t shy away from the work.”

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Expanding pre-K

Along with the challenges, Pontes said she’s excited about the district’s moves to expand access to pre-K. Next week, five new pre-K classrooms will be in operation at the site of the former Montessori School on Eastern Avenue, which the school committee signed a lease to use earlier this week. Long term, Pontes said they hope to expand the program even further.

“We know that our kids need to be in school early. They need to have access to social skills, numeracy, literacy, social skills, language acquisition all those good things,” she said. “We are focusing on creating this sense of belonging for our students and our staff.”

Under Pontes’ guidance, the district is also focused on adding more support systems to help students succeed, like hiring more paraprofessionals and interventionists.

“We believe that all kids can learn,” she said.

Overall, the new school year will bring continuing challenges but more opportunities as Pontes settles into a technically new, but familiar, role.

“We’re excited to start again,” she said.

Audrey Cooney can be reached at acooney@heraldnews.com. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Herald News today.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Maria Pontes' first school year as Fall River school superintendent