At a joint meeting of the School Committee and Board of Selectmen Tuesday night, Brian Stevens of Deerfoot Trail was appointed to fill the vacancy that resulted from Jeff Shaw’s resignation from the School Committee last month. The other two candidates for the position, Keith Cheveralls and Wade Holtzman, helped spearhead the successful petition to censure the School Committee at the fall Town Meeting. The vote in favor of appointing Stevens was nearly unanimous, with only Selectman Bill Marinelli voting against him.
Stevens, who was traveling on business, could not attend Tuesday’s meeting. However, Board of Selectmen Chairman Lucy Wallace read aloud a written statement he provided to the boards, listing his qualifications and reasons for wanting to serve.
Stevens is a teacher who has taught “at every level from elementary to college…mine is an informed voice,” he wrote. He has lived in town for seven years, has two children in the Harvard schools, and currently serves on the Cultural Council. He wrote that he was volunteering to serve out of a desire to help the town through difficult times.
“The people need to know they have been heard,” he noted. In his letter of interest submitted to the superintendent, he wrote, “I see the role of the School Committee as one of advocacy, providing supervisory oversight to administrative leadership. This oversight is best when non-intrusive, yet ever-interested and questioning. I think that with steady leadership, recent citizen grievances can be addressed in such a way as to sustain the pride we have felt in our schools.”
Early in the meeting, Cheveralls and Hotlzman addressed the two boards and the dozen or so audience members directly, each explaining why he ought to be selected for the board. Cheveralls spoke first, pledging to bring more accountability to the board if chosen.
“The community is clamoring for change,” he argued. “We must move beyond mending fences—we must redefine the school board.”
In his statement of interest to the superintendent, Cheveralls said his previous experience as a managing director with the Bank of America had provided him with “extensive knowledge of prudent management practices, especially in the fields of risk management, compliance, policy and procedures, as well as personnel issues,” which would help him be an effective board member.
Cheveralls has lived in Harvard since 1994, with two college-aged sons who both attended Harvard schools. He currently serves on the Special Education Task Force, the Special Education Audit Committee, and chairs the selectmen’s Shaker Hills 40B Ad Hoc Committee. In addition, his wife is in her fourth year of teaching the fourth grade at the elementary school.
Holtzman said he had put his name forward to prove wrong those citizens who had claimed that no one would be willing to serve on the School Committee if the town voted to censure the board. He argued that the biggest problem facing the school board is its lack of accountability. Holtzman said he had attended the school board forum held last week, where the leader of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees [MASC], Glenn Koocher, had spoken about the role and responsibilities of school boards. “I heard the head of MASC say that credibility is a fragile thing,” that, once broken, is hard to reassemble, Holtzman told the boards. He currently serves on the board of the Historical Society, but until he and his wife started the petition drive to censure the school board, he had not been politically active in town, he said.
The two boards briefly questioned Cheveralls and Holtzman, with Selectman Tim Clark asking what is “the one top thing” they would do to specifically address the issues they see plaguing the school board. Neither Cheveralls nor Holtzman could be pinned down to a specific action they would try to do if picked for the board, however.
“I don’t have an agenda,” Holtzman said, adding that he was offering himself to fill a vacancy.
School board member Virginia Justicz asked the two candidates if they could work with the superintendent and the current chairman, Willie Wickman, “in a consensus-building way.” Holtzman said in his experience in business, a board builds consensus by “debate, digging deep, and not accepting the first answer given” to it. Ultimately, board members may have to agree to differ. Cheveralls agreed, saying that working for consensus doesn’t always mean that everyone is in agreement, but that once the board votes on a matter, it needs to move on.
When the time for a vote came, Marinelli nominated Cheveralls for the vacancy. However, only Marinelli and Selectman Bob Eubanks voted in his favor, with the rest voting against him. Then the two boards voted whether to select Stevens, and all but Marinelli voted in his favor.
Stevens will serve on the school board until the next town election in April. At that time, he said, he plans to run for a full term on the board.
