“It's a drop in the bucket, but I’m glad to be that drop in a bucket”— Winooski School District’s new superintendent takes the baton

Wimer Chavarria, Winooski School District Superintendent, photo courtesy of wsdvt.org

For Winooski School District, this July doesn’t just mark the first full month of summer vacation — it’s also Wilmer Chavarria’s first month on the job as district superintendent. 

The Winooski School Board announced its selection of Chavarria this past March after a yearlong search. Born in a refugee camp in Nicaragua, Chavarria shares identity with the minority-majority district — the only of its kind in the state. 

This month marks the passing of the baton from his predecessor, Sean McMannon, who served in the role for the past decade. The Winooski News sat down with each to talk about both sides of the transition. 

Chavarria has lived in Vermont for the past three years, the two most recent of which he spent working as equity director of Milton School District. But his journey in educational leadership began out west, in New Mexico, where his now-husband was a teacher. He picked up work as a Spanish substitute and quickly realized he was in the right place. But his love of education always drew him to think beyond a single classroom. From the beginning, he obtained simultaneous teaching and administrative licenses with the goal of making an impact on a system-wide scale.

“I got a lot of people singing my praises for my teaching and my relationship with students and families and all that, but it really broke my heart to tell them, ‘I love being a teacher, but this is not what I’m here for,’” he recalled. “‘I’m doing this in order to have legitimacy in my future roles because I will not gain the respect of the community if I don’t prove that I know what it’s like to teach or that I know how to be a principal.’”

“And so I needed to be a teacher, and also be a principal, and even be a district-level leader so that when I became a superintendent, I could say, ‘Been there, done that, I know the system in and out.’” 

He’s known what it's like to work under toxic leadership, he said, to feel like you are performing for your students while “knowing that inside, I was not feeling respected and appreciated. But I couldn’t let my students see that.”

“And then I experience what it was like to be taken care of … then you walk into a classroom and focus on learning and focus on taking care of the students instead of all of those feelings that constantly come into your head and your mind and your heart,” he said.

He still renews his teaching license every time it’s up, he said. “The fact that I can hold a position that I can model a tone and a culture and a climate that is a kind of culture and a system that a teacher can thrive, that's my drive, that’s my biggest motivation.”

He calls the well-being of teachers a “north star” guiding him. He sees educators as the barometer of the health of a school and district — when the teachers aren’t feeling supported, it suggests students are not in an optimal learning environment. 

As for his future in Winooski, Chavarria said he can’t be more excited. He said the setup for the new facility has the potential for “so many amazing things,” like collaborating across grades, family accessibility, visibility for both teachers and students and the sense of a hub in the community. Having all three of the district’s schools — elementary, middle and high school — under one roof opens up a lot of opportunities for that kind of work, said the exiting superintendent, Sean McMannon. 

“I think there’s so much you can do in terms of creating a welcoming environment and then a seamless continuum of the curriculum,” McMannon said. A student’s whole support network since kindergarten can pass them in the halls. 

“Then you realize that one of the biggest pieces of equity that needs to happen is the building. There were safety issues, health issues, so I put a lot of work into that,” said McMannon

He was talking about the building’s recent renovations and upgrades under the district’s capital project, a multi-million-dollar initiative funded by a loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The capital project was spearheaded by McMannon and the administration toward the end of his tenure, beginning in August 2020, and is now taking its final strides toward completion. 

“You don’t often see an investment in a public school in a low-wealth district and (an) ethnically and linguistically diverse (district). That’s just not something that happens regularly in our public education system across the country,” said McMannon. 

McMannon said he entered the district a decade ago when its self-esteem was low. Faculty and students were being crushed by low scores on tests that didn’t account for the multilingual needs of the community. 

“We spent a lot of time figuring out how to help people recognize that the people and the place of Winooski are an incredible asset, whether you're talking about refugees, whether you’re talking about a low-wealth place,” McMannon. “Those are all some qualities that come together to create an incredible place, an incredible opportunity for growth.” 

Part of this involved developing a district presence on social media and meeting with interpreted groups of parents from different linguistic backgrounds to understand what they wanted to see from the administration.

“I’m just really grateful for the opportunity. It’s not often that a wonderful opportunity like this in an amazing place like Winooski comes available, and I felt like at the time it was a really good match for my skillset and for the work that really fills me up too and helps me to grow. And I know the community will rally around Wilmer in the same way they rallied around me in his next set of work” 

Now as he pursues a role in the Northeast Kingdom, McMannon feels he’s leaving the district in capable hands. 

“(Chavarria’s) been very accessible and open and has great questions … I think it will be a really smooth transition.”

A transition, like any, that brings new energy. 

“I’m the kind of person who will be walking down the hallway singing something randomly,” said Chavarria. In New Mexico, he said, he was known as “the principal who goes around in a scooter singing.” He said he loves the way people come to welcome what at first might seem weird. Singing always soothed him growing up when he struggled with an undiagnosed disability, so he’s welcomed quirks into his leadership. 

In his free time, he paints, edits videos and dances. One thing people laughed about in his interviews, he said, was that he makes his own ties, to wear and give as gifts, as his mother taught him on her sewing machine. These disciplines have helped him see the power of arts in school, he said.

“When I go into a system, I always pay attention to how much importance we’re placing on the arts and the student experience as far as creativity. The arts is one big example of that, how are we nurturing students’ creativity and ability to do things that they feel they love because I identify myself with that quite a bit.”

When not in Vermont, Chavarria spends time at a home in Nicaragua with “lots of animals in it”  four or five times a year. The majority of his family still resides there. 

“I’m always forever an exiled refugee, so there’s nothing like being home, you know, there’s something to it,” he said. “Just being in the land where you were born. And since I have the privilege of being able to do that now, I do it as much as I can.” 

In Nicaragua after a Cold War, Chavarria’s first experiences of school didn’t involve doors or windows but rather a single sheet of brown note paper he would erase each night — and a teacher. 

“Whenever I think of the teaching profession, I think of them because I don’t know that there are more noble humans and more resourceful, amazing, resilient humans than teachers. And I’ve known that since I was a little child,” he said.

When he was 15, Chavarria graduated from high school in Nicaragua and won a scholarship to attend a national university. Within the year, he won a second scholarship, the only awarded in his country, and departed to Canada to continue his education. There, he learned English before attending a private college in Indiana.  

For anyone, it would be the definition of growing up fast. But Chavarria said he was selling bread on the street as a kindergartener and, at age 12, backpacks for profit with his cousin. 

“I never saw myself as a child. I knew that I was a child only because it was an inconvenience because people closed doors on me.”

In the only district in the state with a dominating demographic of refugees, new Americans and students of color, Chavarria hopes he will be a leader they can see themselves in. 

“I am always very explicit about my identities and the fact that I can be a model of a leader in a system in education for students who are unlikely to see those models in positions of leadership — that excites me as well,” he said. “I love it that our white students have an opportunity to see leaders who are white all around them. There's no shortage of white leadership in Vermont. And I am glad that they are taken care of in that way. So I am only glad that in my position there’s a little bit (of change), at least. It's a drop in the bucket, but I’m glad to be that drop in a bucket.”