Interim Superintendent Finalists to Interview in Public

A committee searching for interim superintendent candidates hopes to present three or four finalists to the School Committee in April.

That's the target, interim search panel member Rick Kraft said.

The finalists will interview in public.

And the public will be invited to participate. School officials will announce the finalists' names and the date or dates of their interviews, as they become available. 

Ideally, the interim superintendent will be selected in April, well ahead of the post's July 1 start.

Search panelists have yet to decide how long the interim will serve.

The panel has received eight or nine applications, and have reviewed about half of them, said Kraft, also a School Committee member.

He and School Committee member Ted Delano are joined on the search group by four of the district's five principals, teachers Tom Reid and Amy Jalbert, Business Manager Ed Cronin,  Information Technology Director Kevin Kaczynski and Town Administrator Tom Younger.

The committee met last week and Wednesday.

Superintendent Lynne Celli will serve as executive superintendent for special projects, and is scheduled to earn $85,000, or half her current $170,000 salary.

The superintendent's special projects work starts July 1, 2013. Responsibilities will include the following:

• work on the district's elementary school building needs project
• pursuing Chapter 70 and other state and federal funding 
• pursuing grant funding
• alignment of curriculum including STEM programs

School Committee members said earlier that they hope to hire the interim superintendent without spending any more money than the district would have spent had no changes been made.

" ...  we will keep the combined cost of both the interim Superintendent and Dr. Celli’s new position very close to the current year’s cost of a single full-time Superintendent," the committee said in a statement released by the chairman, Larry Beaupre.