Eastie’s Tommy Welch to Oversee BPS Elementary Schools in Eastie, the North End, Charlestown and South End

This month Boston Public School Superintendent Dr. Brenda Cassellius announced changes to her leadership team.

One key change was moving BPS’s Academic Superintendent Tommy Welch back to overseeing elementary schools in East Boston, the North End, Charlestown and South End.

Welch, an Eastie resident, was overseeing BPS high schools as an academic superintendent for the past two years.

Cassellius said Welch’s work focuses on connecting the leaders and resources within the network to provide a coherent instructional vision for all schools.

“While Tommy Welch has done tremendous work overseeing BPS high schools in recent years, particularly in further developing our alternative education options, he has continued to foster deep connections with the East Boston, Charlestown and North End elementary and middle school communities,” said BPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius. “I am thrilled to have Tommy redirect his focus and leverage these strong relationships to work collaboratively with school leaders to improve outcomes for our younger students.”

Welch said during his first week back overseeing elementary schools, he visited every school and met with all school leaders. 

“I am so encouraged and grateful to see the growth and improvement that schools have experienced since 2015,” he said. “I am also appreciative of the collaborative culture that the school leaders embrace. Returning to the network of schools serving Kindergarten through eighth grade students in Eastie, Charlestown, the North End, and part of the South End is an absolute thrill.

After working with school leaders here from 2015-2017, Welch transitioned to working with secondary schools across the city for the past two years.

“Professionally, this transition brings me back to the grade levels that I taught in the late 1990s and early 2000s,” he said. “Personally, this return to supporting the neighborhood schools brings me closer to my own community. I am a resident of Orient Heights and parent of two BPS students in East Boston.”

Welch said he looks forward to supporting the continued success of the schools within this area and collaborating with the school leadership teams and parents, and connecting dedicated external partners.

“All of these stakeholders are part of the recipe for amazing neighborhood schools in our community, and for creating the conditions to build strong academic foundations for all of our students,” said Welch.

Prior to coming to BPS in 2015, Welch was the founding principal of a middle school and later a high school in the South Central neighborhood of Los Angeles. His classroom teaching experience focused on English learners and special education inclusion in the lower elementary grades, as well as ESL and English at the high school level.

Welch is a graduate of Occidental College and the University of California Los Angeles and is currently a doctoral candidate at Boston College. He lives in Eastie with his wife and two BPS children.

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