WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The committee that coordinates the hiring of shared personnel in the Lanesborough-Williamstown Tri-District decided Friday to try to have an interim school superintendent on board by Jan. 1.

 

The four-person Administrative Review Subcommittee, comprised of the chairs of the Williamstown and Lanesborough elementary school committees and the Mount Greylock School Committee and an additional Mount Greylock committee member, met for about two hours on Friday afternoon at the junior-senior high school.

 

The ARS decided to ask the Tri-District's two hiring authorities, the Mount Greylock School Committee and Superintendency Union 71, to concur with an aggressive plan to screen applicants, conduct interviews and hire an interim during the month of December.

 

"I doubt you will have someone on board by Jan. 1, but you've surprised me before," said Tri-District counsel Fred Dupere, who advised the ARS at Friday's meeting.

 

The transition is necessitated by the abrupt departure of former Superintendent Douglas Dias, who left at the start of his second year at the helm of the three school districts.

 

The first order of business on Friday was to decide whether to hire an interim superintendent, like the Tri-District did in December 2014 to replace long-time Superintendent Rose Ellis.

 

Assistant Superintendent Kim Grady is serving as the acting superintendent since Dias' departure.

 

"My two cents is we should look to hire a longer term superintendent — like a year and a half to two years kind of thing," Mount Greylock School Committee member Carolyn Greene said. "Maybe 18 months is a good target so we could get through the building project, from a Mount Greylock perspective, and take on the issue of regionalization.

 

"We could decide what we're going to do with [regionalization] … so we're not doing a full search while we're doing what we realize is not very sustainable."

 

The "unsustainable" Tri-District model was raised as an issue by Dias during in his response to written complaints that led to his departure earlier this month.

 

Mount Greylock formed a committee in 2012 to look at the expanding the current 7-12 district to a full K-12 district that encompasses its two "feeder" elementaries in Lanesborough and Williamstown. The regionalization effort was put on the back burner in 2013 when Mount Greylock was invited to enter the Massachusetts School Building Authority's building process.

 

Even before Dias' letter referencing the challenges for a superintendent serving three different school committees, members of the Mount Greylock committee had in recent months mentioned the possibility of reviving the RDAC.

 

In the near term, the Mount Greylock School Committee will be called to its second special meeting of the fall to consider the ARS plan for replacing Dias.

 

Dupree on Friday advised the group that the districts do not need to advertise for the interim position and can instead rely on the Massachusetts Association of School Committee's list of potential interim superintendents (often, like former interim Gordon Noseworthy, retired administrators) and any qualified candidates who are known to school committee members already.

 

The ARS decided to ask the Mount Greylock and SU-71 (a combination of LES and WES Committee members) to meet either Nov. 23, 29 or 30 or Dec. 2 to consider the succession plan.

 

Assuming the two hiring authorities agree on the 18-month interim approach, the ARS Committee then will ask for their colleagues' permission to let the ARS quartet screen potential candidates and report back up to three finalists who would be interviewed by the SU-71 and Mount Greylock School Committee members.

 

In anticipation that the plan conceived on Friday may be approved by the two committees, the ARS decided to post a meeting immediately following the SU-71/Mount Greylock joint session with an executive session of the subcommittee to begin reviewing resumes.

 

"In doing that, our intent isn't to presuppose that the committees will approve the recommendation but rather to give ourselves maximum flexibility to move expeditiously if that's what the committees direct us to do," ARS Chairman Dan Caplinger said.

 

In other business on Friday, the ARS reviewed the shared services agreement that unites the three districts for administrative purposes and reviewed the organizational structure of the central office.