Westville’s Sherri Killins’ daily commute will turn northward now that she has become Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick’s new commissioner of early education and care.
Killins will be one of three commissioners directly below the commissioner of education. Her portfolio will be pre-school education. She starts the job in February.
“It’s exciting. It’s pulling together both the licensing and day care providers with universal pre‑K,” she said Tuesday.
Killins ran for mayor of New Haven in 2003. Before that she ran Empower New Haven, before leaving in a dispute with Mayor John DeStefano over what she called City Hall interference in what was supposed to be a nonpolitical, independent federally funded agency.
Since then Killins has been working in Baltimore. She is the vice president of human development and operations there for the Casey Foundation. Currently, she is on loan from Casey to serve as interim director of a not-for-profit she helped start in the early 1990s called the Family League.
Killins has been commuting south to Baltimore from New Haven as her three daughters have continued in area schools. Two are now in college; a third is a junior at Hamden Hall.
Killins said she will continue commuting from Westville in her new job.
“She has another another 18 months in school,” she said of her youngest daughter. “I’ve been commuting to Baltimore for five years. Boston’s not a big commute at all — two and a half hours in the car or the train.”
You should run again for mayor!!!!!!!!!!!