Matthew P. Poska took over the Wilmington Public Schools on July 1 as the district’s first permanent superintendent since Glenn Brand left in mid-2025. He came from Nashua, New Hampshire, where he spent four years as an assistant superintendent, and before that from 14 years as a middle school principal in Beverly. This is the first of six articles on how he was chosen, what he has done before and what he has said he will do here. The record comes from the resume the district posted during the search, the School Committee’s recorded meetings, state salary and test files, and the newspapers that covered each stop of his career.
Lynn, Merrimack, Salem State
Poska grew up in Lynn and graduated from Merrimack College in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in history and secondary education, cum laude, with Phi Alpha Theta honors. His resume lists the 1993-94 Hockey Coaches’ Award and the 1992-93 Hockey East Academic Honor Roll, and his coaching record afterward is almost all hockey. He earned a master of education in secondary school administration from Salem State College in 1999 and completed the National Institute for School Leadership’s instructional leadership program in February 2013.
In 2013, when he was a finalist for the Arlington High School principal’s job, the Salem News and Patch both described him as a doctoral candidate in education at Nova Southeastern University. The resume he submitted to Wilmington in 2025 lists no doctorate and does not mention Nova Southeastern. He was the only one of the three finalists without one: the district’s announcement styled the others “Dr. Patricia Haynes” and “Dr. Brandi Kwong” and him “Mr. Matthew Poska.” Neither the district’s search page nor the resume says whether the degree was abandoned or is still in progress.
Teacher and coach, 1994 to 2002
His first job was teaching eighth grade United States history at Thurgood Marshall Middle School in Lynn, a magnet school the U.S. Department of Education had recognized as a model middle school, from 1994 to 1997. He moved to Lynn English High School in 1997, teaching eleventh grade U.S. history plus psychology and sociology electives, and was picked by the principal to teach World History I in a ninth grade pilot cluster ahead of the restructuring of Lynn’s high schools; his peers elected him cluster leader. He was also assistant athletic director and commencement coordinator.
He coached the whole time: head hockey coach at Swampscott High in 1996-97, where his team qualified for the state tournament in his first year; head hockey coach at Lynn English from 1997 to 2002; head girls tennis coach from 1998 to 2000; assistant baseball coach from 1995 to 2000; and summer and fall instruction at the Cape Ann Hockey School in Peabody, the All-American Goaltending Camp in Wakefield and Merrimack’s hockey school. In the School Committee’s deliberations 23 years later, three members would describe his style as a “coaching mindset” or a “coach-like vibe.”
Saugus and Beverly, 2002 to 2020
In August 2002 he became director of athletics for the Saugus schools, managing 24 sports on a $250,000 budget, and a year later added assistant principal of Saugus High School to the title. His resume says he raised more than $80,000 in under two years to keep every sport running through budget cuts, including a $20,000 advertising deal with the North Shore Spirit baseball team.
Beverly hired him as an assistant principal at Beverly High in July 2004, and in July 2006 made him principal of Briscoe Middle School. He held the job 14 years. According to the resume, he restructured the schedule to add about an hour a week of core instruction, created building-based content facilitator positions beginning in 2009-10, put 17 Smart Boards in math and science rooms with an $80,000 private donation, started a team advocacy period in 2010, co-wrote a “Small Learning Communities” grant with Beverly High that brought in $2 million in the fall of 2010, and chaired the Educational Design and Specification Subcommittee for the Beverly Middle School building project in 2014. When the new grades 5 through 8 school opened in September 2018, he moved over as its principal.
He looked for the next job more than once while in Beverly. He was one of four finalists for Arlington High School principal in February 2013, a finalist for the Beverly High principalship in 2019, and one of two finalists for Peabody Veterans Memorial High School principal in September 2019, when Peabody chose its interim, Chris Lord. In February 2020, at 49, he told Beverly staff by email that he was “actively pursuing other opportunities” and would leave at the end of the school year. Beverly Superintendent Suzanne Charochak told the Salem News she was not surprised because he had pursued other jobs before, that student outcomes had improved under his leadership, and that his departure was “a testament to his strength as a leader.”
The state’s figures bear her out at the school level. In spring 2017, the first year of the current MCAS, 49 percent of Beverly Middle School students in grades 3 through 8 met or exceeded expectations in English, matching the state, and 47 percent did in math against a state 48. By spring 2019, his last tested year, English was 56 percent against a state 52, and math 49 against 49.
Nashua, 2020 to 2026
Poska’s next job began in December 2020, five months after he left Beverly: principal of Elm Street Middle School in Nashua, a city of about 90,000 with a 10,000-student district. New Hampshire’s 2021-22 principal salary file lists him at $108,400. The resume says he served on the district’s Middle School Steering Committee, which planned the restructuring of Nashua’s three middle schools and a new building, on the redistricting committee, and on the secondary reopening team during the pandemic.
In August 2022 he moved to the central office as assistant superintendent for secondary education, overseeing grades 6 through 12, career and technical education, adult education and the alternative high school, and in 2024-25 served as assistant superintendent for all of K-12. New Hampshire’s 2023-24 administrator salary file lists Nashua’s two assistant superintendents at $119,995 and $123,600 without naming them. His resume credits him with co-chairing the middle school steering committee, leading the redistricting committee with the superintendent as the new McCarthy Middle School opened in the summer of 2024, a 1:1 Chromebook plan for grades 6 through 12 in September 2023, the district’s “Portrait of a Learner” initiative, Title IIA and IVA grants, and a seat on the negotiating team that settled the teachers’ and paraprofessionals’ contracts in the spring of 2025. He told Wilmington’s committee both were settled before the school year started.
Two matters from the Nashua years bear on his record and are covered in Part 5 of this series: the federal Justice Department’s 2021 settlement over the district’s English learner program, which his resume says the leadership team “successfully complete[d]” and which the department closed in May 2025 after extending it in December 2024; and a 2021 dispute at Elm Street over a teacher’s classroom pronoun questionnaire that ended up in the state education commissioner’s hands and was the subject of a 2024 New Hampshire Public Radio investigation, in which Poska called the situation “a perfect storm.”
Licenses and outside roles
His resume lists Massachusetts licenses as principal or assistant principal for grades 5-9 and 9-12 at the professional level, PreK-8 at the initial level, and superintendent or assistant superintendent at the initial level, plus New Hampshire principal and assistant superintendent credentials and certification as an athletic administrator. When the School Committee asked on November 25 whether a candidate from New Hampshire would be licensed here, the Massachusetts Association of School Committees’ consultant told them all three finalists held Massachusetts superintendent certification with nothing pending. New Hampshire’s public search of active credentials returned no entry for him this week, which is consistent with his having left the state’s employment in June.
Off the clock he served on the board of trustees of Marian Court College in Swampscott from 2005 to 2008, coached youth hockey in Salem-Swampscott and Lynn, youth lacrosse, Little League and youth soccer in Swampscott, and sat as a Swampscott Town Meeting member from 2002 to 2007.
What the committee saw
By the time Wilmington’s School Committee interviewed him on November 19, 2025, he had 31 years in education, as he told them, none of them as a superintendent. That was the central question of the deliberation that followed, and it is the subject of Part 2.
His resume, as posted by the district, is here; the district’s search page is here; the NHPR report is here.
