The School Superintendent Search Committee is moving ahead in its efforts to recruit a new, longterm leader for the Harvard school district. Currently, the committee’s meetings are being held in executive session, closed to the public.
In explaining why the sessions are closed, School Committee Chair SusanMary Redinger cited the provision in the state’s open meeting law that allows a committee to go into executive session “to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with nonunion personnel.”
The committee is preparing questions for interviews with preliminary candidates, Redinger said. She also noted that executive sessions protect the confidentiality of applicants, who are not required to notify their current employers unless they become finalists for the Harvard position.
According to the committee’s original schedule, all applications are due by next Friday, Nov. 16. Redinger says that about a dozen completed applications have come in, and the committee hopes to have as many as two dozen in hand by the deadline.
The preliminary round of interviews is scheduled for early December. Finalists for the position will be selected from among those candidates. According to the committee’s timeline, finalists should be announced Dec. 11.
Asked when the process would be opened to the public, Redinger said that public hearings would begin with the interviews of finalists for the superintendent’s position. Those interviews are planned for mid-January.
