Williamstown-Lanesborough Offers Superintendent Post to Medway Principal
The two school committees that make up the Tri-District voted on Monday night to offer the superintendent's post to Medway Principal Douglas Dias, above. He was one of two candidates interviewed Monday.
After interviewing both Dias and Woodstock, Conn., Superintendent Francis Baran for 90 minutes apiece, the joint Tri-District committee deliberated for another 90 minutes before deciding to offer Dias the job, pending a check of his references.
Although a Monday vote was always possible, it seemed less likely after the executive director of the New England School Development Council last week advised the committee members to not choose one of the finalists until they had performed reference checks or a site visit to the finalists' current districts or both.
But as Monday night's deliberation got under way, two things were apparent: most of the committee members had a strong preference among the two candidates and several were concerned that waiting until next week to decide meant risking losing Dias to West Springfield, where he also is a finalist for the superintendent position.
Mount Greylock School Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Greene worked hard to keep the conversation from turning to pros or cons for either candidate before a motion was on the floor to offer to Dias.
"The decision is to move forward or not move forward," she said at the outset. "If we move forward, it's with both candidates. ... Because we haven't done the reference check yet, this is what [NESDEC's] Art [Bettencourt] advised."
"I think we need to act expeditiously," Mount Greylock member Rich Cohen said moments later.
And after several rounds of calendar comparisons revealed that the 13-member panel could not find a date for its next meeting until March 30, support for a quick vote strengthened.
Wendy Penner of the Mount Greylock SC said she was reluctant to take any action without reviewing feedback from community members and the Tri-District principals, who met both Baran and Dias throughout the day on Monday leading up to the interviews.
Greene told her colleagues that interim Superintendent Gordon Noseworthy told her that the principals at Williamstown Elementary, Lanesborough Elementary and Mount Greylock favored one candidate over the other, and she passed out written evaluations provided by the principals and community members.
After taking 15 minutes to review those evaluations, the committees decided whether to move forward.
First, it had to dispense with a motion to advance both candidates, which was defeated by SU71 on a 3-1 vote with Lanesborough School Committee member Bob Barton voting in the minority. Mount Greylock defeated the same motion 5-2 with Chris Dodig and Gary Fuls in the minority.
That set the stage for a motion from Cohen to advance Dias pending the reference checks.
The discussion quickly centered on Dias' lack of experience as a superintendent — a glaring difference between he and Baran, a superintendent at Woodstock since May 2002.
"Despite the lack of superintendent experience, he has an awful lot of principal experience," Dodig said. "I can look past the lack of superintendent experience. Someone has to the opportunity to get a really good superintendent in him. This will be his first superintendent position, but it's got to start somewhere."
Dan Caplinger of the Williamstown School Committee said he was concerned that neither Baran nor Dias were the ideal candidate, again citing Dias' lack of experience in the district's top post. Barton, too, expressed concerns about Dias' readiness.
But Noseworthy advised the committees that lack of experience should not disqualify an otherwise preferred candidate.
"I hear [Barton] about Mr. Dias' experience, but I listened a lot to his skill set, and I think he'll be able to make the shift," Noseworthy said.
Noseworthy also addressed a concern voiced by Cohen: Dias' lack of experience with elementary education.
Baran is a former high school teacher and administrator who oversees a K-8 school system in Connecticut. Dias' entire professional career has been spent in either high school or college. That was worth discussing as the committees sought a candidate to direct both the elementary schools and Mount Greylock's junior-senior high school.
"In our profession, you almost never will find someone who has been an elementary person and a secondary person and then gone into administration," Noseworthy said. "It doesn't happen very often.
"Nobody is going to come with everything, but there will be opportunities for him to attend training. He struck me as the kind of guy who, if he had a void or vacuum in his experience, he'd fill it up."
Mount Greylock's Penner said she was persuaded by Dias' performance in the interview and the reviews she read from the public.
"When I read the application materials, I was disappointed in this candidate," she said, referring to the lack of central administration experience. "Today taught me you need to be open-minded and trust your search committee."
Tags: finalists, interview, MGRHS, SU71, superintendent,
