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Date: 12/5/2023
AMHERST — The Joint Union 26 and Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committees voted unanimously to engage a search and recruitment firm for the purpose of identifying candidates to fill the vacant school superintendent post.
At the Nov. 28 meeting, committee members heard from the Subcommittee for a New Superintendent, whose members reviewed the responses to a published request for proposals from interested parties.
The subcommittee and joint committee are tasked with helping to fill the vacancy left following former Superintendent Michael Morris’ departure. Morris left in August in a mutual agreement with the committee in the wake of the Title IX investigation into allegations of harassment and mistreatment of LGBTQIA+ students at the middle school.
School District Finance manager Douglas Slaughter has been serving as interim superintendent since Morris resigned.
Committee member Jennifer Shiao told members that a request for proposals was published with a deadline for submissions from search firms set for Nov. 20. Shiao told committee members that the subcommittee met on that same day to go over the submissions.
“We received five proposals,” Shiao said. “Of the five, two of them didn’t meet the minimum evaluation criteria so they were deemed unacceptable.”
New Haven, Connecticut based Charter Oak Recruitment Services, Sunshine Enterprises USA out of Maitland, Florida and Omaha, Nebraska based McPherson & Jacobson were left for review by the subcommittee.
The remaining three submissions were then evaluated and rated by the subcommittee based upon the standards outlined in the RFP.
“All four of the subcommittee members agreed that McPherson & Jacobson’s proposal was the strongest,” Shiao said.
Shaio told the committee that while Charter Oak and Sunshine did have extensive search experience, neither firm showed sufficient backgrounds in scrutinizing candidates for public school superintendents.
“They each had a list of past projects and past searches that they had worked on but both of them didn’t have any superintendent search experience, so we all felt that by far McPherson & Jacobson was the clear, strongest proposal.”
According to subcommittee’s summary, “McPherson & Jacobson’s proposal detailed dozens of successful superintendent searches. The proposal provided a detailed description of their process, including robust community engagement, which highly aligns with our needs. There was also a great deal of emphasis on their successes in recruiting a diverse pool of candidates.”
Both committees voted in favor of engaging McPherson & Jacobson to conduct the process which will include the gathering of community input through public sessions to allow residents and districts members to offer their thoughts on the qualifications for a new superintendent.
A search committee will be seated in January to provide intake and review of applications from potential candidates. As previously identified, the joint committee is seeking to install a new superintendent by July 2024.