School Committee member Geoff Swett is seeking his fourth term on the board.

Swett considers a change in the way teachers are evaluated within the district as one of the School Committee’s greatest achievements while he’s been on board.

“One of the things I thought was missing was accountability for teachers,” he said.

Through some of Swett’s efforts, he says, the Joint Labor Management Committee was formed within the district, developing a better evaluation process for teachers. A year later, he said, the state followed suit.

“We were actually ahead of the rest of the community in this,” he said. “In my opinion an extremely beneficial and productive thing.”

The change has forced department heads, instead of principals or assistant principals,  to evaluate teachers.

“It was a dog-and-pony show for the principal,” he said. “Everybody knew it was a meaningless process. Now, a vast number of our educators are proficient or better, and that’s a healthy system. Over the course of a number of years, it will make a huge difference.”

A Harvard graduate in criminal justice, Swett is retired after a career in healthcare. He serves as the girls tennis coach at Wareham High school, and he also is a volunteer bus driver within Wareham Public Schools.

“My goal now is to improve the perception as well as the reality of the education that is received in Wareham’s schools,” he said. “I think it’s important that we sell what we’re doing here. We wanted to hire an outstanding superintendent, and I think we’ve done that.”

Swett, who has lived in Wareham since 1996, said another goal of his is to create programs that benefit all levels of students. He said programs like the STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) Program at Wareham Middle School and the dual enrollment programs at the middle school and the high school are examples of programming that’s recently be developed.

"The (students are) really excited about these kinds of things,” he said. “Now I’d like to figure out how to raise the bar with respect to rigor overall.”

In the past, Swett has served on the Board of Directors of the Big Brother Big Sister organization, where he also was a Big Brother himself. He was on Wareham’s Finance Committee from 1999 to 2005. He currently serves on the South Coast YMCA’s Board of Directors, and is the chairman of the Gleason Family YMCA’s Board of Directors. He’s on the Board of Directors at the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. He’s also on the Board of Directors and is the treasurer of the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra.

As for PARCC testing, Swett said he doesn’t think student test results should be used to evaluate teachers, and that it should be done by a capable supervisor. He’s also concerned over the individual effects it will have students.

Similarly to MCAS, PARCC testing is meant to show whether students in grades K-12 are on track to be prepared for college and their careers, though one of PARCC's goals is to set up a nationwide standard for testing while MCAS is strictly within the state.

He expressed concern about "teaching to the test."

“It is true that what PARCC is trying to do is probably admirable," he said. "I would like to see the PARCC testing delayed two or three years so that we know that teachers are capable.”