This is the last of six articles on Matthew Poska, Wilmington’s superintendent since July 1. The first five covered his career, the November 2025 vote that chose him, his interview, his entry plan and his Nashua years. This one asks two questions the School Committee’s recording shows it did not ask in public: what the test results at the schools he led actually did, and what the record of the two finalists it passed over looks like when checked the same way. The Massachusetts figures come from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s school and district profiles; the New Hampshire figures are explained below.
Beverly, 2006 to 2020
Poska was principal of Briscoe Middle School, and from September 2018 of the new Beverly Middle School, for 14 years. The current MCAS began in spring 2017, so the state’s achievement-level data cover only his last three tested years. The share of students in grades 3 through 8 meeting or exceeding expectations, with the state figure after it: English 49 against 49 in 2017, 49 against 51 in 2018, 56 against 52 in 2019. Math: 47 against 48, 48 against 48, 49 against 49. In his last year the school’s English result was four points above the state and its math result matched it. Since he left, the school’s 2025 results were 41 against a state 42 in English and 47 against 41 in math.
For the years before 2017, the state’s current pages do not give a comparable figure. SchoolDigger, a private site that ranks schools from the state’s published results, puts the school’s statewide percentile in the 40s in the mid-2000s and in the 60s and low 70s by 2013 through 2016. That is relative standing, not proficiency, and part of the climb coincides with district-wide gains in Beverly, so it should be read as a positive trend rather than a result that was uniquely his. Superintendent Suzanne Charochak’s statement when he left, that “student outcomes improved under his leadership,” is consistent with both sets of numbers.
Nashua, 2020 to 2026
New Hampshire’s Department of Education was mid-migration when this series was researched and its assessment pages returned errors, so the Nashua figures below are SchoolDigger percentiles computed from the state’s results, labeled as such, not the state’s own accountability measures.
Elm Street Middle School, where Poska was principal from December 2020 to July 2022, ranked in the bottom 15 percent of New Hampshire middle schools before, during and after him: 14.5 in 2018, 12.5 in 2019, 14.4 in 2021, 14.6 in 2022, 9.0 in 2023. SchoolDigger’s summary for 2022-23 put 21 percent of its students proficient in math against 34 percent for the district and 42 percent for the state. The building closed in June 2024 and was replaced by McCarthy Middle School. A 19-month principalship across the pandemic is too short to judge; the fair statement is that he neither moved nor sank a struggling school.
As assistant superintendent for secondary education from August 2022, he was one of several administrators over Nashua’s two high schools and three middle schools, and the superintendent set district policy. The high schools, ranked on the SAT in New Hampshire, fell during those years: Nashua High North from the 60th percentile in 2023 to the 25th in 2026, Nashua High South from 47 to 48 with a swing in between, Fairgrounds Middle from 22 to 20, Pennichuck Middle from 23 to 19. The 2021 and 2022 figures are pandemic-era highs seen statewide and are not a fair baseline. New Hampshire’s SAT-based school ranks move a great deal year to year, and this is context, not a verdict; it is also a question nobody on the Wilmington committee is recorded asking.
Brandi Kwong, the finalist with the job already
Kwong, who holds a doctorate from UMass Lowell, was the only finalist who had been a superintendent. Her resume lists 29 years in Massachusetts schools: science teacher in Tewksbury and Hamilton-Wenham, associate and then supervising principal of Methuen’s Comprehensive Grammar School, a PK-8 of about 1,100 students, assistant superintendent from 2012, and superintendent of the 6,800-student Methuen district from August 2018, with a budget she lists at $100 million and seven bargaining units. Rebecca Lord chose her on November 25 as “the only person who has been in this role already.” Stephen Turner, who had watched Methuen’s meetings, said, “I can understand why she feels the need to leave.”
The state’s figures for Methuen over her tenure, district first and state second, percent meeting or exceeding expectations: grades 3 through 8 English 43 against 52 in 2019 and 30 against 42 in 2025; math 41 against 49 and 27 against 41; grade 10 English 45 against 61 and 33 against 51; grade 10 math 47 against 59 and 25 against 45. The district lost ground against the state in every tested category, most sharply in tenth grade math, where the gap went from 12 points to 20. The state’s 2025 accountability report classifies Methuen as not requiring assistance, with “moderate progress toward targets” at 42 percent; its school percentiles are Methuen High 12, Timony 21, Comprehensive 38 and Marsh 47. Methuen is a higher-poverty city district and much of that is structural.
On December 8 and 15, 2025, three weeks after Wilmington’s vote, the Methuen City Council adopted resolution TR-25-74, a vote of no confidence in Kwong and the School Committee, 5 to 2. Its recitals cite proficiency of 33 percent in reading and 28 percent in math at the elementary and middle levels as reported by U.S. News, construction work “reportedly conducted without the required appropriations,” students classified as English learners “based on having a Spanish last name,” a political rally allowed in a school building, and “the findings of the school district audit” showing “substantial failures in oversight, compliance, and administrative leadership.” The council minutes record teachers and parents speaking in her defense. She had announced in September that she would resign at the end of the school year; she went on medical leave in December, ending her tenure.
Patricia Haynes, the finalist on paper
Haynes, with a Ph.D. from Capella University, has been assistant superintendent in Portsmouth, New Hampshire since 2022. Her resume lists elementary, middle and high school teaching in Connecticut and Florida from 1995 to 2011, curriculum director posts in Torrington, Connecticut and Milford, New Hampshire, the principalship of Dr. Crisp Elementary, Nashua’s highest-poverty Title I school, from 2015 to 2017, a year as a principal in the Sanborn Regional district, and five years as Sanborn’s director of teaching and learning, acting as superintendent in the superintendent’s absence. She holds New Hampshire and Massachusetts superintendent certification. She has never been a superintendent; she has had six employers since 2011, and her longest stay is five years.
The resume line the Wilmington committee cited most often says she “reduced the number of failures of students taking high school Algebra for the first time from 51% in 2023 to 2% in 2024.” No Portsmouth board record or press report confirming it was found for this series; it measures course failures in one course over one year, not test scores. Her claim of “a 20% overall improvement of student test scores on district tests” at Dr. Crisp refers to district tests, not state ones, and could not be checked. Portsmouth was a top-fifth New Hampshire district before and after she arrived. In March 2026 she was one of two finalists for the Masconomet Regional superintendency and lost to Heather Galante; the Bedford Citizen reported that her supporters cited her greater experience with budgets and capital projects while Galante’s backers “lauded her interpersonal skills.” It was the same split as in Wilmington, with the same result.
Side by side
Poska is the only one of the three who has never been a superintendent and has no doctorate, and the only one with no elementary experience. He is also the only one with a long, verifiable, positive record in one place, at the school level, and the only one whose last job ended on his own terms with references the committee called “terrific.” Kwong had the experience and a district that declined against the state in every category under her, followed by a formal no-confidence vote. Haynes had the broadest instructional resume, nothing in it that public records confirm, and two committees in four months that preferred someone else.
The check does not support the claim that Wilmington passed over a proven candidate. The defensible criticism is of the pool: 17 applicants produced these three.
What he inherits
Wilmington’s own results, district first and state second: grades 3 through 8 English 59 against 52 in 2019 and 47 against 42 in 2025; math 67 against 49 and 54 against 41; grade 10 English 77 against 61 and 59 against 51; grade 10 math 71 against 59 and 56 against 45. The district remains above the state in every category, and its lead has narrowed in every one of them since 2019: in grades 3 through 8 math, from 18 points to 13; in tenth grade English, from 16 to 8. That is the trend the committee’s October 21 MCAS presentation addressed, and the one a superintendent whose first-year goals are all process measures will eventually be asked about.
The state’s 2025 MCAS page for Wilmington is here.
