Last modified: Sunday, April 27, 2008 2:00 AM EDT Mansfield picks RI educator BY TED NESI SUN CHRONICLE STAFF MANSFIELD - After a lengthy search, Superintendent Brenda Hodges has picked a Rhode Island educator and former high school principal to become the new principal of Mansfield High School. Joseph Maruszczak, the director of a K-6 public charter school in South Kingstown, R.I., and a resident of Warwick, R.I., will take the helm at MHS on July 1, Hodges has announced. Maruszczak beat out Sheila Fisher, a Weymouth middle school principal and North Attleboro resident, for the position. Fisher is the wife of North Attleboro Town Administrator Mark Fisher. "He seems wonderful," said school committee Chairwoman Jean Miller. "He seems very excited to be here. ... He's very enthusiastic, and he looks like he's ready to hit the ground running." Bill Farrington, a retired educator from Barrington, R.I., has been serving as interim principal at Mansfield High School since July 2006, when Hodges left to work in the superintendent's office. Miller said it's good for the school to finally put a long-term principal in place. "I think the teachers are probably more happy than anybody over there," she said. Maruszczak has been an educator since 1990, and has spent much of his career in the Foster-Glocester Regional School system in Rhode Island. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Providence College. From 2001 to 2006, Maruszczak was principal of the 989-student Ponaganset High School, which the state designated as a high-performing school during his tenure. Before becoming an administrator, he taught high school chemistry. In 2004, Maruszczak traveled to Washington, D.C., to discuss Rhode Island's statewide education reforms with policymakers. He told The Providence Journal the state was right in "providing an alternative to one-shot, high-stakes testing that is still high stakes, but evaluates the development of skills over the long term." Maruszczak left Ponaganset High in 2006, and spent one year as an assistant superintendent in Middletown, R.I., before becoming director of Kingston Hill Academy, a charter school in South Kingstown, R.I., less than a year ago. Maruszczak takes the helm at MHS just as the school is preparing for an influx of students. There were 1,419 students enrolled at Mansfield High School at the start of this school year, according to the school department, but that number is expected to rise in the next few years as an above average number of students make their way through the upper grades. Four temporary trailer classrooms will be installed this summer to accommodate the surge in enrollment. TED NESI covers Mansfield for The Sun Chronicle. He can be reached at tnesi@thesunchronicle.com or 508-236-0333.