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Date: 2/15/2022
LUDLOW- With the search for a new superintendent in full swing, the Ludlow School Committee discussed the next steps in the interview process during its Feb. 8 meeting.
Committee member Chip Harrington, who also chairs the Superintendent Search Committee, said the committee narrowed the search down to the final four candidates.
“We ultimately got nine applicants, seven we wanted to dive in deeper on, we ended up interviewing five and the Superintendent Search Committee is moving four names forward to this committee,” he said.
Harrington then named the finalists and gave a description of their current jobs.
“The first one is Cynthia Kennedy, who is the director of Intervention and Acceleration at Athol-Royalston Regional School District; second is Michael Richard, he is the superintendent and business administrator in the Lee Public Schools; three is Mary Jane Rickson, she is the interim superintendent at North Brookfield Public Schools; four is Frank Tiano, he is the interim middle school principal at Dover Sherborn Public Schools and he was a superintendent in the past in Chelmsford and Uxbridge,” he said.
With the four finalists selected, Harrington detailed the next steps in determining the district’s next superintendent.
“Now what we do as a School Committee is site visits. We are going to go to each of these four school districts to interview teachers, parents, students, community members, mayors, selectmen and things like that. Then we will have public interviews and the public can watch everything, but the questions and interviews will be up to the School Committee,” he said. “The goal is to hopefully name a new superintendent by mid-March, so we have a lot of work to do in the next six to seven weeks.”
With limited availability over the next few weeks, committee Chair Michael Kelliher said the site visits would likely begin during the last week of February.
“Looking at our schedule we are probably not going to get anything set for site visits next week. The following week is school vacation week across the state so we would realistically be looking at the last week of February for site visits and the first week of March for public interviews,” he said.
Along with the site visits and interviews, Harrington said the committee has free reign to reach out to the school committees in the districts the finalists work in for their own information.
“Because the candidates are going to set up who we speak to, as School Committee members we have the right to reach out to School Committee members in those districts to ask their thoughts so you can do your own due diligence, you do not have to wait for the site visits,” he said.
Following the interviews, the committee will then deliberate on which candidate to higher as the next superintendent.
“The deliberations will be in public, we may each want to go home and then discuss it at a separate meeting, but the deliberation of this body will happen in public. If we do not want to make a decision at that time we can always come back,” Kelliher said.
In terms of the actual interviews, the committee agreed to meet earlier the day of the interviews since all of the interviews would be conducted in one meeting. With the Superintendent Search Committee’s search completed, the board also agreed to vote to dissolve the committee at its next meeting.
The Ludlow School Committee next meets on Feb. 22 and coverage of that meeting will appear in the March 3 edition of The Reminder.