Easthampton School Committee to move forward with interim superintendent

Date: 5/1/2023

EASTHAMPTON — After West Springfield interim Superintendent Vito Perone had his offer rescinded and Ludlow Director of Curriculum and Instruction Erica Faginski-Stark withdrew from consideration, the Easthampton School Committee voted to move forward with an interim superintendent for the 2023-24 school year, pending more information from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees.

With Berkshire Hills Regional School District Director of Teaching and Learning Jonathan Bruno as the lone remaining finalist and an option of reopening the search, the School Committee met on April 25 to discuss the next steps for the position.

Before jumping into the discussion, Chair Cynthia Kwiecinski said that all of the candidates would be on a level playing field in terms of experience, despite the fact that members of the committee noted concerns about Bruno’s experience.

“None of the finalists have been a superintendent for a year, it was our intention to offer all three finalists, whoever got the position, a mentorship for superintendency. Basically, they are all on a pretty close, level field because nobody has been a full-time superintendent for any time,” she said. “Dr. Perrone was an interim, but that is not exactly a superintendency.”

She added that moving forward with Bruno could be a way “of healing the community.”

“His personality and his commitment to communication, and the volume of people that he works with would do a lot for reaching out and balancing people,” she said. “The other thing about having the superintendent be Dr. Bruno instead of an interim is that we have some consistency.”

Kwiecinski also detailed what would happen if the committee went forward with an interim.

“The other idea is that hire an interim and that would buy us a year, we would go through MASC and have an interim for one year, and that would hopefully quiet things down some, but we’d have to do a superintendent search come mid-winter and start this process all over again,” she said.

Kwiecinski noted that MASC would provide a list of potential interim superintendents.

“MASC has a list of people who are interested and just have their names out there as being interims. Often, it’s a retired superintendent or someone who is about to retire. So, we would contact them right away and start to pull together a list, and then make a decision from that,” she said.

Mayor Nicole LaChapelle said she was in favor of going with an interim superintendent.

“I think our obligation as a school committee is to produce a process, and there are a ton of people who don’t like that result, on all side of this issue. Because of that, I like the idea of an interim and having the summer to collect opinion, to build trust so we can focus on that over the summer into the fall and have somebody who has experience guiding the boat operational team,” she said. “I have a lot of confidence in the admin team and the buildings.”

When restarting the search later this year, LaChapelle said she wants the search conducted with a firm other than MASC.

“Our last experience with them was very much in the circle of existing superintendent candidates and I would just like to see a search conducted by a firm that has a more broad reach in where they recruit from or post that,” she said.

Member Marin Goldstein noted that while there were some mistakes throughout the process, the committee was doing the “best we can.”

“I don’t think there was any gross negligence, there is no conspiracy — and I think anyone who is trying to make it a conspiracy is not understanding our process and not understanding that the votes that each of us made was ours to give,” he said. “Everybody has their opinion, everybody can state that, but ultimately it’s for us to decide and that doesn’t mean that we are being disrespectful, or being belligerent or abusing our power to not vote the way you wanted us to vote, that is not how reality works.”

Committee member Laurie Garcia, who has supported Perrone since the beginning, made a motion to reenter negotiations with Perrone, which was defeated with a 5-2 vote.

“I just want to state once again that I truly feel the only way we can work toward healing this community and showing what a true teachable moment is and showing students that we can sit together and learn from our mistakes and work towards a good solution which will heal, I’d like to enter negotiations with Dr. Vito Perrone,” she said.

Member Ben Hersey said he was in favor of hiring an interim candidate.

“He’s a really strong candidate down the road, I think. I really think it’s time to put this particular search away and start fresh next year, get an interim in the meantime and hopefully begin the process of healing. I think that our community does need to hopefully put this away and find a way forward,” he said.

Kwiecinski said she was split on how to move forward.

“Part of me says that I think that he would respond to a mentorship program, and I think that we have a really strong administrative team, so I think that’s a role he could grow into pretty quickly. There is a lot to be said about having an interim who has already been a superintendent, who can pick up these pieces pretty quickly,” she said. “We kind of have been on a hiatus right now and it would be nice to get back to some sense of normalcy.”

Goldstein said he was in favor of tasking someone with reaching out to MASC about hiring an interim superintendent but leaving the option to go forward with Bruno on the table.

“My preference is we do our due diligence, we get that information in front of us, then we can make a decision with how to proceed, whether it’s Dr. Bruno or an interim position,” he said.

While LaChapelle suggested taking a vote to make a final decision on the previous superintendent search, city attorney Russ Dupere said the committee did not have to resolve the search before going forward with an interim.

“I think the process as far as our candidates, I would suggest a vote on Dr. Bruno or some kind of motion we are going to go forward with an interim search rather than leave those options on the table,” LaChapelle said.

Goldstein suggested restricting the search to going forward with an interim, regardless of if it’s Bruno or another interim candidate, while leaving the options open for beyond that year.

“What we could then do is say we are choosing to seek an interim superintendent for next year. So we are looking at this point in this process to end up with a one-year contract offer and that could be to Dr. Bruno, or it could be somebody else who comes back on this list,” he said.

Ultimately, the committee voted 5-1 in favor of the option to hire Bruno as the interim, with one abstention from Garcia and member Shannon Dunham voting against moving forward with an interim superintendent.

The committee also agreed to meet for a working session to discuss the next steps in the search once more information has been provided by MASC on May 1, coverage of this meeting and the decision moving forward will appear in the May 11 ediiton of The Reminder.

During the meeting, Kweicinski also announced that the committee was planning to begin hybrid meetings next school year, a topic which has received much debate throughout the superintendent process.