Massachusetts Association of School Committees

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Penny Blackwell
President

Penny Blackwell has combined many years as an advocate for parents and students and technical school education with a professional career as a nurse clinician and health care administrator. Her public school advocacy includes several years as PTA President and member of the Massachusetts PTA Board as well as serving as its Legislative Chair. She has also served on joint panels with MASC at both the PTA and MASS/MASC Joint Conferences and has participated in several National School Board Association (NSBA) conferences, and as a representative to the NSBA Delegate Assembly.

Ms. Blackwell is currently completing her twelfth year as a member of the Upper Cape Cod Regional Vocational Technical School Committee. She has served as Vice Chair of that Committee and is currently the Immediate Past Chair, having held the position for the past four years. She is also the Chair of the Policy and Superintendent Evaluation subcommittees, and serves on the Budget and Sick Bank Subcommittees. She also served three years on the Sandwich School Committee where she was a member of the Negotiations subcommittee and was the Committee’s representative on the Sandwich Community School Board. In 2002, the Committee nominated Ms. Blackwell to the Association’s All-State School Committee. She rose through the ranks as Division VII Chair and member of the MASC Board of Directors for five years, organizing successful annual legislative forums.

Over the past decade, she has served on both the MASC Policy and Resolutions Committees and as a member of the Federal Relations Network. She was among the leading proponents of greater state allocations for both district and regional transportation funding and increased federal allocations for the Carl Perkins Technical Education Act. Ms. Blackwell was honored with a Life Membership in MASC in 2007. In November 2009 she was elected by the Delegate Assembly to serve as the Association’s Vice President, and the following year was elected President-Elect.

Professionally, Ms. Blackwell is a manager at Cape Cod Healthcare. Last spring she received a Master’s degree in Public Administration focusing on education and public policy.

Glenn Koocher
Executive Director

A native of Cambridge, MA, Glenn Koocher served on the Cambridge School Committee from 1974-1986. On the board, he was vice chair, chairs of the Committees on: Budget, Special Education, Student Concerns, and Personnel Policy, and delegate representative to both the Community Schools Commission and the city's Community Action Program. On the School Committee, he served as budget chair during the implementation of Proposition 2 1/2 and was actively engaged through that city's multi-year desegregation effort.

The parent of two public school students, including one member of the Class of 2003, Koocher has combined a career of educational advocacy with professional duties in health care and programs for older people. Most recently he served as the Northeast US Regional Manager for Programs and Advocacy for the American Association of Retired Persons.

Koocher graduated from the Cambridge Public Schools and earned a BA at Harvard College (1971). He is an alumnus of the Kennedy School's Program for State and Local Government Executives and received an MPA from Suffolk University.