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“Pam could not have been more
professional,” Blodgett said. “I was
very impressed.”
Sadly, one of the reasons Angelakis
may have handled the situation so
deftly is that it was not her first crisis
of the school year.
Less than three months earlier, a
hazing incident with the Swampscott
High football team led to the cancellation
of a varsity and freshman game.
The matter drew widespread media
attention — though nothing compared
to the storm created by the situation
with Edward Rozmiarek, who was
placed on leave and ultimately
resigned the principal’s post, narrowly
averting criminal charges from
Blodgett.
“Pam is cool under fire,” the DA said.
“It became very obvious that we share
the same goal: student safety. She did
a great job in both situations.”
Just another day at the office for
Angelakis? Not exactly, though her
handling of both crises reflects
positively on her ability as a relatively
new superintendent and those who
took a chance on a homegrown
administrator two years ago.
It was December 2013 and the
Swampscott School Committee was
preparing to launch a search for a new
superintendent. (Dr. Garry Murphy
was serving as interim super.)
Angelakis had been working as
assistant superintendent for about a
year and a half, after eight years as
a principal and 14 as a teacher.
Like most communities, Swampscott
had gone through a revolving door
of superintendents, giving the School
Committee a distinct choice: another
nationwide search or promote from within.
“I have always been an advocate of
promoting from within if the ability is
there,” said Ted Delano, who is in his
second two-year term on the School
Committee. “Having worked with
Pam, I could see she was really
beginning to shine.”
Delano’s colleagues agreed and on
Dec. 10, 2013, they unanimously voted
to appoint Angelakis superintendent of
schools. She took over the position in
February 2014.
“I feel very fortunate that people
saw the potential and took a chance
on me,” she said. “I feel like they had
a lot of pressure to do a search. I’m
grateful they put their support
behind me.”
The middle child of Ted and Shirley
Angelakis’ (Ted Jr. and Dan are her
brothers), Angelakis was president of
her class at Salem High School and
Salem State. Though she spent plenty
of time working in her dad’s restaurants
in Peabody and Lynn, Angelakis knew
her calling at a relatively early age.
After graduating from Salem State
in 1989, she applied for dozens of
teaching positions – “there were
hundreds of applicants for every job”
— before being hired in 1990 as an
aide at Clarke School by then-principal
Dick Baker. That fall, a teacher
at Machon School went out on sick
leave and Angelakis was asked to be
a substitute for the remainder of the
school year. She was hired full-time
at Machon in 1991.
“Learning teaching theory is
great,” she said, “but then you get in
a classroom and there are 22 young
faces in front of you and 44 parents
that think you know everything.”
Angelakis, who has master’s
degrees from Columbia and Salem
State, knows better than that, and
if she needed to be reminded, the
back-to-back crises last year took
care of that.
“I’ve made some mistakes along the
way, but when I put my head down
on the pillow at night I always want
to feel as if I’ve done my best for the
kids that day,” she said.
That philosophy
drives all her
decisions,
including those
made in crisismanagement
mode.
“In those situations, you have to
think about kids and parents and how
to communicate with them,” she said.
“I still feel as if I’m an educator and I
tried to turn those situations into an
opportunity to educate.”
That’s a skill she does not leave at
the office.
“I always said to myself that if I hit 35
and I was not married, I would adopt
because I knew I wanted to be a mother,”
said Angelakis, who became enamored
with the Wednesday’s Child feature on
the WBZ News and started reading a
catalogue of children in the custody of
the Department of Children & Families
waiting to be adopted.
“I knew I would love to give someone
a good home,” Angelakis said, and in
2007 she welcomed 5-year-old Olivia
into her home.
“The hardest thing for me is finding a
balance between family life and work
life,” she said. “To do the job right, it’s
24/7. When I’m home I have to be fully
present and spend quality time with her.”
In her rare moments of free time,
Angelakis likes to read, garden, cook
and travel with Olivia, who turns 14
this year. She was an accomplished
musician as a teenager, playing the
viola in the Cape Ann Symphony
and Salem Philharmonic Orchestra.
She actually minored in music at
Salem State.
These days, she is content to
ensure that her key constituencies —
students, teachers, parents — are
working in harmony, in order to build
a better school district, one that will
withstand the next crisis that lands
in her lap. n
Swampscott pre-schoolers
with Superintedent Angelakis
SPRING 2016 | 9