The mayor must step in and direct School Committee Chair Thomas Abruzzese to allow qualified local candidates who were refused an interview to be considered in the school superintendent choice process.
The four finalists are decidedly mediocre.
Their experience as superintendents is sorely lacking. Not one of them has served one day as a superintendent of schools.
One of the finalists chosen after 350 hours of allegedly backbreaking choice making by a committee dominated by Abruzzese’s strongarm tactics is suing the school system she is presently working for.
As a lawyer, one would expect Abruzzese to show more common sense than to choose as a finalist one of the candidates suing herpresent bosses.
Such a choice heaps a huge liability on the city. What’s the chances she’d sue the Everett Public Schools if made the superintendent?
We find such a choice made by Abruzzese’s hand picked choice committee to be incomprehensible in this instance. It is an indefensible choice.Two of the candidates are studying for their master degrees. They are students.
Two other choice picks are hardly the stuff of tried and true public school administrators. One comes from a failing public school system.
The other has not yet been certified to be a superintendent — but will be soon. Great.
The fourth finalist is labor lawyer who has represented teachers in contract negotiations. He has not an ounce of experience in negotiating a 120 million school budget.
They are wannabes chosen by a choice committee sorely lacking in leadership from its chair Abruzzese. Its surprising that the state organization being the choice pick process is being used by Abruzzese and the committee to buttress the belief that they have ab idea if what they are doing.
The mayor needs to demand an interview for the local candidates to legitimize the process.
The mayor must step in and put Mr. Abruzzese in his place.
At the last meeting, which the mayor attended, Mr. Abruzzese conveniently forgot to introduce the mayor.
What an embarrassment!
That pretty much tells you where his head is at.
The mayor has the power and the authority to round up the necessary votes of the school committee members to demand interviews for the local candidates and for them to be part of the choice process.
In fact, in the end, the school committee can choose whomever it wants and ignore the choice committee.
We will back this whole heartedly not because the mayor is doing it, but because it is the right thing to do.
We are of the belief that most administrators and teachers throughout the Everett educational community are not feeling positive about a choice process that determines no one local need apply.
Local educators know more about the school department than all four of these hopeful superintendent candidates combined.
Administrators like Acting Superintendent Janice Gauthier, Assistant Superintendent Charlie Obremski and perhaps the city’s most likeable and popular educator and homegrown success story Dr. Omar Easy, have all been disparaged as though they are losers in Mr. Abruzzese’s eye.
The mayor’s intervention is needed here to restore balance and integrity to the process.
Some people are begging to wonder who is in charge — the mayor or Abruzzese?
Many of those concerned about the choice process are wondering aloud: “Why aren’t qualified Everett applicants being accorded an interview and on merit chance of leadership position here?”
We share those concerns. The mayor needs to act.