Mary Morgan has been involved in Wareham’s school system for nearly two decades – and in that time, she has seen “a lot of wonderful things, but I also have concerns.”

Morgan began at the school as a Title 1 special education teacher, and moved onto being a reading specialist. Her latest position was as an out-of-district special education coordinator. She said she left this position partly because of these concerns, so she could run for Rhonda Veugen’s seat on the School Committee.

“There are things happening that were out of my control, and I couldn’t just stand by and watch,” Morgan said. “[Veugen] is very involved, and cares about the school system, but I believe I have more experience to offer, and a better understanding of what happens in the school system.”

Morgan said she has lived in the town for the last 25 years, and currently lives in her late grandfather’s house. Though her children have left, Morgan said she remains very attached to the town, and wants to make a difference for its families with kids still in the school system.

“Families are extremely important to me, and I would like to see a better relationship between the families and the school community,” Morgan said.

Among Morgan’s concerns are the current Level 3 status of both Wareham Middle School and Wareham High School.

Schools in Massachusetts are yearly ranked based on their Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment Scores (MCAS) on a scale of Level 1 to Level 5, with Level 5 being the worst. Level 3 schools in Massachusetts are among the lowest 20 percent of all schools in Massachusetts.

Though the middle school has been classified as a Level 3 school for the last several years, the high school’s MCAS scores this year dropped it from a Level 1 to a Level 3. Morgan sees this as a failure to appropriately use the money available to support all students, rather than just focus on challenging the more advanced students.

“To me, it makes sense to have the School Committee looking at the … budget and all other grants, to make sure they are connecting together to make … strong programs in the district,” Morgan said.

If elected, Morgan said she also wants to focus on the early grades, and get children involved and excited about advanced learning. She said the advanced programs at the middle and high school levels are “wonderful,” but if the schools and the administration don’t reach students while they are young, “it is very difficult to get children to enter those programs – at that point, it is only reaching the top students.”

“We need to offer more at the elementary level, and offer more support to help start inspiring them young,” Morgan said. “It gets harder and harder as they get older to bring them back on track.”

She said it would be easier to help kids become and remain inspired, if they were given more support in transitioning between schools, especially between elementary school and middle school. She also said she would like to see special programs carried from school to school. For instance, the John W. Decas Elementary school has a Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math (STEAM) program, but Minot Forest Elementary does not.

Morgan also doesn’t see the administration offering as much support to at-risk and special education students as she believes is necessary.

“I’ll be honest: even before the current administration, there was always a bandaid fix to things, and we need to be more proactive,” Morgan said. “We need to have appropriate interventions for students that are struggling.”

In order to do this, Morgan said she would like to see the district hire more paraprofessionals for the classrooms, and more special education teachers, both of which have been cut over the years. Not only will this help with managing large classrooms – which sometimes have a ratio of one teacher to 25 students – but it will also help the kids who “fall through the cracks.”

“We have had in the past highly qualified paraprofessionals in the classroom, and I know there is some concern that … they won’t have an impact on instruction,” Morgan said. “But if teachers are differentiating instruction appropriately, a good paraprofessional is going to have an impact on the classroom.”

Town elections are on April 5.