Hello everyone,

The Belmont School Committee will be voting on the decision to hire a Superintendent tomorrow. This decision impacts every resident, student and staff member, yet the School Committee just revised the agenda for tomorrow’s meeting to remove “Citizen Concerns.” The agenda does not list any opportunity for the public to comment. This process has been deeply flawed from the outset and the School Committee must vote to stop the process at tomorrow’s meeting and begin anew.

On November 7, 2022, the School Committee chose to meet in private Executive Session to decide whether they should hire an Interim or permanent Superintendent. Executive Session is only allowed in particular instances and the deliberation over whether to hire an Interim or permanent position should have been made in public. The public was not given any opportunity to comment at that meeting. Those executive session minutes have not been published.

On November 14, 2022. the School Committee chose to again meet in private Executive Session to discuss the Superintendent hiring decision. The School Committee exited Executive Session and announced they were seeking a permanent replacement. It is unclear if they voted on that decision because those executive session minutes were not released to the public. The School Committee also announced that day that they had formed a Superintendent Search Subcommittee consisting of only 2 School Committee members. The Agenda for that meeting did not say that the School Committee would be discussing the formation of a Search Subcommittee and again, the public was not given any opportunity to comment at that meeting.

The School Committee determined, without seeking pubic input, that they planned to hire the new Superintendent before two current school committee members vacated their seats and two new School Committee members are elected on April 4, 2023. This begs the question of why the School Committee felt it was in the best interest of the Town to have two outgoing members vote on this decision less than a week before the election.

The Superintendent Search Subcommittee met 6 times between November 18, 2022 and January 5, 2023. Of those six meetings, only the first meeting agenda stated there was an opportunity for the public to comment. The remainder of the meetings listed no opportunity for public comment yet during that time the two member Subcommittee chose which consultant group to recommend, drafted the job listing and appointed the members of the Superintendent Screening Committee without making an open call for volunteers. The two members of the Subcommittee appointed themselves plus one more School Committee member to the Screening Committee. They did all of this before seeking any public input.The Subcommittee chose to record and post some of their meetings and not others. On the eve of the hiring decision, they still have not posted the minutes from their December 21 and 28 meetings.  

In other towns, search committees have surveyed the public before drafting job posting to ensure that the candidates sought are reflective of the will of the majority of the town. That did not occur here. The School Committee chose to put out a job posting that did not even require the applicant to have education experience.On January 23, 2023, there was a Joint meeting of the Search Subcommittee and the Superintendent Screening Committee they created, along with the search consultant. There was no opportunity for public comment.

On January 24, 2023, the School Committee voted to disband the Search Subcommittee. There was no agenda item listing any such vote so the public was not aware of any opportunity to comment. The Superintendent Screening Committee then met 5 times between January 28 and March 6, 2023. There was not a single opportunity for public comment at any of those meetings and the agenda for the first meeting states in bold “Public comment will not be taken.” The Screening Committee, along with the consultant, determined the manner in which the public would finally be allowed to provide input. They sent out a survey and conducted focus groups. None of the data from the survey or focus groups has been made public, depriving the public of the opportunity to know if the Screening and/or School Committee’s criteria and priorities aligned with those of the Town.

In nearly every other town’s recent Superintendent searches, this information has been released to the public very early in the process.The Screening Committee’s agenda for the March 6, 2023 meeting in which they were going to select the finalists was not published, effectively denying the public the opportunity to be informed of this important meeting. Most of the Screening Committee’s meeting minutes were not published until after the School Committee announced the identities of the finalists.On March 6, 2023, the Superintendent Screening Committee met in Executive Session to review the candidates for Superintendent. There was no opportunity for public comment. The Screening Committee came out of Executive Session, into Open Session, yet failed to announce that it had made any decision, depriving the public of the opportunity to be informed and to be able to comment in a timely manner. The Screening Committee also did not state in Open Session that it provided any recommendations to the School Committee, which begs the question of how the School Committee was informed of the Screening Committee’s decision.

On March 24, 2023, a member of the Screening Committee wrote an open letter and revealed that the Screening Committee had completed their charge and voted to promote two finalists to the School Committee at that March 6, 2023 meeting. This information should have been revealed on March 6, 2023 in open session. The fact that it was not leads to the question of how the entire School Committee became informed of the decision.On March 7, 2023, the School Committee met in Executive Session. The minutes state the purpose of that meeting was to: “inform the School Committee of finalists for the Superintendent of Belmont Public Schools given finalists have 48 hours to inform their districts.” The agenda did not state that the School Committee was going to review all the semifinalists selected by the preliminary Screening Committee, deliberate and make a decision as to whether they would promote more people than selected by the Screening Committee. There was no opportunity for the public to comment at this meeting. The executive session minutes have not been published.

It has now been revealed that the School Committee chose to conduct its own review of the semi-finalists, after the preliminary screening committee had completed its task, and decided to put forth 4 candidates (one of whom chose not to advance themselves). The School Committee announced the identities of the finalists on March 10, 2023. The community forums allowed just 30 minutes for the public to ask questions of each candidate. However, each candidate was allowed to speak at the beginning of that session, reducing the time even further. For every candidate, there were members of the public left standing at the microphone who were not given the opportunity to speak. Questions were raised as to the amount of time the School Committee had afforded the public and whether the School Committee’s interviews were sufficiently thorough for arguably one of the most important positions in Belmont.The School Committee sent out a survey on March 17 for the public to comment on the Superintendent candidates.

On the eve of the hiring decision, the data from that survey has not been revealed to the public. There have been numerous calls, including a petition, to have the newly elected School Committee elect an Interim Superintendent and begin a new search process but there is no indication the School Committee is willing to go in that direction.In recent days, complaints alleging violations of the MA Open Meeting Law relating to the Superintendent Search process have been filed against the School Committee, as have several public records requests to access the records the School Committee, the Search Subcommittee and the Screening Committee have failed to make available to the public. No hiring decision should be made until these matters are resolved. Echoing the other open calls to the School Committee, this flawed process must stop tomorrow night and the newly elected School Committee must be allowed to begin a new process to appoint an Interim Superintendent and to conduct a search which affords the public the full opportunity to participate and to be informed.

Patrick Whittemore