New Principal 'In a Good Place to Lead Some Changes'

Last year as principal at Wilmington High School, Eric Tracy didn’t have an office.

Instead, his office was used as a special education classrooms and he moved around the school all day, making everything from the theater to a social studies classroom his office each day.

It is that kind of non-traditional thinking that Tracy brings with his as he becomes the first permanent principal at Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School in three years.

Tracy was selected in February to become the school’s next principal from a field of 37 applicants. He takes over for John Hughes, the retired Natick High School principal who served as the Regional’s interim principal for two years after Matt Fox left to become the principal at Veterans Middle School in Marblehead.

Tracy said his job search originally began a few years ago when he though he wanted to be an assistant principal and applied to a few openings.

“I couldn’t imagine myself not working with kids,” he said he realized. “I really love being a principal.”

The Haverhill resident move to Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School comes after serving a principal in Wilmington for nine years, a length of time in the position he said is “virtually unheard of these days.”

At the Regional, Tracy said he plans to spend a lot of time updating parents and the community about what is going on at the school. He has already started a blog and has a Twitter account where he plans

“Schools don’t market themselves well,” he said, and he hopes to defy that.

He’s looking forward to an iPad pilot program where 20 freshmen will each be issued a tablet and a “rolling writing lab” of Chromebooks that will be used by the English department.

He has sensed a real desire from students, parents and teachers to integrate technology into the school and classes and have the new wireless network “function as a tool.”

“It’s exciting,” he said. “I’m in a good place to lead some changes.”