At Monday’s School Committee meeting, former committee member Stu Sklar challenged the recent decision to seek an interim principal for the Hildreth Elementary School (HES). Sklar led off the public comment period of the June 14 meeting by urging the committee to reconsider combining the roles of superintendent and principal until a permanent principal can be hired. “We’re going to spend a lot of money to hire a caretaker, a place-holder,” he argued. Sklar asserted that the money saved by temporarily combining the two positions, along with funds from the Shaw Trust, would be enough to build the new HES playground by this September.
Mike Thornton of Mill Road followed Sklar to the microphone, also asking why the money-saving solution had not been more thoroughly considered. “Why not use this option?” he asked. “I’d just like to understand the rationale.”
Chairman Keith Cheveralls responded that committee members had thoroughly discussed the possibility of combining the two positions in the executive session at which Superintendent Thomas Jefferson informed them of Principal Mary Beth Banios’s resignation. The idea had also been presented at the public meeting on June 4, he said, along with those of a permanent or an interim hiring. He noted that the press coverage had not adequately reflected the discussion of the combination model.
“It is the considered opinion of this School Committee to proceed with an interim principalship,” Cheveralls stated. “I would consider it an unhealthy pursuit to revisit this decision … I do want to acknowledge this input, but it is received too late for us to take action on it.”
As for the progress of the search for the interim principal, Jefferson reported that the search committee will include most members of the elementary School Council, as well as the president of the Parent Teacher Organization. He noted that he had already received some applications, even though the Boston Globe failed to run the advertisement for the position last week. He expects to fill the position “on or about July 1.”