The Springfield School Committee voted Thursday to hire an outside legal firm and use the services of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees to conduct a national superintendent search.
The 6-1 vote comes after some community members and teachers expressed concern that the search for the city's next superintendent of schools would not be conducted independently.
The debate comes as officials look for a successor to Superintendent Dan Warwick, who is retiring at the end of the school year.
Tracy Little-Sasenecki, the president of the Springfield teacher's union, said she wants the community to be involved in the pick.
"Being a resident of Springfield, [this] has a daily impact on me, as an employee of Springfield Public Schools, but also as my third generation raising a child, it directly impacts her,” Little-Sasenecki said.
But Springfield School Committee member Joesiah Gonzalez said regardless of who they work with, under Massachusetts law, school committees are the ultimate hiring and evaluating authority of any superintendent in the state.
"The thought that the process in its entirety would be completely independent or external, it doesn't work that way," Gonzalez said.
Prior to the meeting, community organizers, some parents and students spoke outside the Roger L. Putnam Vocational School demanding an independent, national search.
The School Committee meeting began at 6 p.m. and included more than three hours of sometimes heated debate on who would handle the applications, conduct the interviews and do background checks on potential candidates.
At one point, a community member in the audience got into an argument with the committee. Mayor Domenic Sarno attempted to bring the meeting back to order.
Choosing the process for the school superintendent search
The initial conversation began with the recommendation from an ad hoc committee, made up of School Committee members Gonzalez, Chris Collins and Barbara Gresham to conduct the search with the technical assistance and expertise of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees and the district's legal counsel, human resources and communications departments.
Gresham said she felt she wasn't heard during the ad hoc meetings and joined members Denise Hurst and LaTonia Monroe Naylor in advocating against using the school district's in-house team to accept superintendent applications and conduct the overall search. They also expressed concerns that the process was being rushed and would not give the community enough time to give input on what they were seeking in a candidate.
"This is what the community wants. They want an outside firm to do the search. And if we as a school board do not listen to what the community wants, that's doing a disservice to us and them," Gresham said.
Hurst said she wants the process to be transparent.
"I want an outside firm to get the applications. I think that there's an impact with respect to internal bias and transparency, quite frankly," she said.
Monroe Naylor questioned the district's capacity to take on the search — especially after in-house counsel Melinda Phelps pointed out that the law firm that handled the search in 2012 had two attorneys attend meetings and advise the committee.
Collins and Sarno advocated for using Phelps and other school district departments to conduct the search. Sarno pointed out that Phelps was actually one of the outside attorneys who handled Warwick's search 12 years ago.
"She did it a dozen years ago. Now she's our in-house counsel and can do the same thing. So, I just I don't understand. I think everybody trusts the integrity and professionalism of Attorney Phelps," Sarno said. "There seems to be some innuendo here that something underhanded is going to go on here, and I take offense to that."
Gonzalez said it has nothing to do with Phelps' credibility, but with a desire from the community for a separation between the committee and the search process. He eventually offered an amendment that would use the services of the MASC and outside legal counsel, specifically Bulkley Richardson, a law firm the district has on retainer.
The committee approved the amendment 6-1.
The committee went on to discuss other elements of the search, including a residency clause that would require the chosen candidate to move to the city within one year of being hired and an applicant review committee made up of local community leaders including at least one parent and one student representative.
