North Adams School Officials to Interview Superintendent Candidates
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NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The School Committee this week will be making one of its most important decisions in years.
The city will be selecting its first educational leader in more than a decade after public interviews with two finalists.
"This is an exciting time for us," said Mayor Richard Alcombright on Tuesday.
That's why School Committee members gathered around the conference table last week to develop a set of carefully worded questions to evoke answers that will inform that selection.
The questions will range from management to community relations, along with educational queries on academics, goals and programs.
Answering those questions will be Barbara Malkas, superintendent of the Webster Public Schools and Stephen Donovan, superintendent of the Acushnet School District, who were named as the finalists. They were picked from an initial 10 applications and after a narrowing down process through the appointed search committee.
Malkas will be interviewed on Monday at 6 p.m. in City Council Chambers; Donovan on Wednesday, also at 6 p.m. in City Council Chambers. The second interview will be followed by discussion and the expectation that one of the candidates will be offered the position. The interviews are open to the public.
School officials visited the Webster schools last Tuesday and Acushnet on Wednesday.
The format will be about a dozen questions with opening and closing statements. The committee spent nearly two hours discussing what questions to ask and how they would be phrased. Some members were concerned that some issues might not be addressed.
"Sometimes you just don't get to everything," said Howard "Jake" Eberwein, who had chaired the Superintendent Search Committee.
School Committee member Tara Jacobs noted some of the questions were open ended, which could allow the candidates to touch on topics not addressed.
"There is some room to meander so what they talk about will be very revealing about what they believe," she said.
The committee used a guide from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, which has aided in the search process, for developing questions. The guide is set up by topics and proved helpful in several instances as the committee members worked to clarify what their questions would address.
The dozen questions will be asked with each School Committee member asking two. Alcombright, chairman of the committee, will not ask questions but rather will do the introductions and setup the opening and closing statements.
Each interview will be about an hour.
Donovan, who lives in North Dartmouth, has been superintendent of the Acushnet School District since 2005. The district enrolls about 975 students in Grades kindergarten through 8 in Acushnet Elementary School and Albert F. Ford Middle School, both level 2 schools. The annual budget is more than $13 million and the district employs about 140.
He has worked in the Acushnet schools since 1998, beginning as a guidance counselor in the middle school, of which he later became principal. Prior to that, he was a mental health counselor at New Bedford High School.
Donovan earned his advanced certificate in educational leadership and master's in school counseling from Bridgewater State University and his doctorate in educational leadership from Northeastern University.
Malkas, who lives in Clarksburg, became superintendent of the Webster Public Schools in 2012. The district has an enrollment of about 1,800 in Grades kindergarten through 12 in three schools: Webster Middle School, Park Avenue Elementary and Bartlett Junior/Senior High School, which are level 3. The district's annual budget is about $17.5 million and it employs 230.
Prior to Webster, she was employed by the Pittsfield Public Schools as curriculum coordinator and then assistant and deputy superintendent for six years. She also was a teacher and assistant principal at McCann Technical School.
Malkas earned her master's degree from St. John University in Queens, N.Y., and her doctorate in education from the Sage Colleges in Albany, N.Y.
The School Committee hopes to have a new superintendent in place by July 1 to replace the retired James Montepare, who is currently filling in as the interim.
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