I encourage you to explore our site to see all we do to promote, encourage, develop, and create the future workforce on the North Shore. As a technical and agricultural school, we are a learning community committed to this work through the thoughtful integration of curricula that blends core content with career-focused programming, resulting in real-world applications. As the largest high school on the North Shore that serves 17 sending and 38 surrounding communities across three counties, we believe that workforce preparation is both our mission and promise to future generations.

I encourage you to explore our site to see all we do to promote, encourage, develop, and create the future workforce on the North Shore. As a technical and agricultural school, we are a learning community committed to this work through the thoughtful integration of curricula that blends core content with career-focused programming, resulting in real-world applications. As the largest high school on the North Shore that serves 17 sending and 38 surrounding communities across three counties, we believe that workforce preparation is both our mission and promise to future generations.

Students are at the center of everything we do. 

What is unique about our learning model is our Pathways courses that allow students to explore and be the best they can be.  Students grow the most when they are shaped by every year through articulated pathways from the moment they enter our learning community to when they graduate and move on to the next step in their career journeys.  Pathways are the way we give students opportunities to learn about personal financial literacy, civics, along with a deep dive into employability skills.

We believe in deeper learning.  All of our coursework is designed to instill in our students the importance of kindness, collaboration, cultural proficiency, responsibility, perseverance, and entrepreneurship as qualities essential for workforce preparation.  Through deeper learning students can enter the workplace in middle-skilled positions with significant opportunities to grow.  Our career technical and agricultural areas take pride in helping our students acquire specific skills necessary for workforce preparation.  

We view academic knowledge and skills not as freestanding content silos, but as complementary and in service to vocational understanding of the world around us.  Therefore, we ground theory in application.  We integrate academic content with technical and agricultural learning.   

We strive to be a good community partner.  We have the resources, talents, and capacity to give back to our local communities.  We see ourselves as an asset to the North Shore and the local economy. Our community helps support the learning of our students and gives them the edge to middle skilled employment opportunities. 

With sincere gratitude to those that make it possible for us to do the work we do every day!

Heidi T. Riccio, Ed.D.
Superintendent-Director

As Principal of the Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical School, it is my privilege to share with you all the exciting happenings taking place in our learning community.  We offer students many opportunities to acquire skills through hands-on projects, integration learning academies, cooperative education work placements, and academic knowledge embedded in student thinking and doing.

In addition to our rigorous coursework, we offer a full range of competitive athletic programs and a variety of student activities and clubs.  We encourage students to be active members of our community by being both good students and active participants in our extracurricular programing.  Our job is to provide the best opportunities and experiences for students.  We know in doing so that they will succeed.    

We look forward to working with you to live our Mission and create a culture of academic and technical excellence.

Welcome,
Shannon B. Donnelly
Principal  

I am Dr. Thomas O’Toole, the Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction, & Assessment, and I am thrilled to work with students and teachers to rethink learning at Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical School learning community.

Our goal is to bring students highly engaging courses that help students become skillful in a particular career technical or agricultural area. We do so through a variety of Career Technical and Agricultural Education (CTAE) coursework that scaffolds from one year to the next and is aligned to industry and curriculum standards whose aim is workforce preparation.  

While we continually strive to be the best career technical and agricultural school in Massachusetts and in the country, we know full well that the greatest learning cannot take place without inspired teaching. And this we have. Essex Tech teachers aim to be the best. They are the ones who bring our mission to life every day in the classroom, in the science lab, in the career technical and agricultural program areas, and across our campus and the North Shore. 

Excelsior!
Thomas O’Toole, Ed.D.
Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment