Harvard’s current special education director, Charles Horn, will step down in June, after serving for six years in the schools. Superintendent Tom Jefferson told the school board at its meeting Monday night that he has put together a search committee to oversee efforts to find a replacement for Horn. The search group has on it four teachers, an administrator, and two parents of special education pupils, Jefferson said.
However, two town residents spoke out at the start of the meeting, asking that additional members be added to the search committee so that a wider range of viewpoints from the community could be heard.
Recent school board candidate B.J. Pessia told the board that she’d like to see them increase the number of people conducting the candidate search, bringing on board volunteers from outside the usual small group of insiders involved with special education in town. Pessia has been a an outspoken critic of Jefferson’s oversight of special education issues.
Wade Holtzman, of Bolton Road, also spoke, reading a letter from his wife Margot, who could not attend the meeting. She wrote that she has been a special education teacher in Cambridge for 30 years, and would like the opportunity to serve on the search committee.
Jefferson answered that he had had to whittle the search committee down from a larger number of people who wanted to serve on it, but that he would “take it under advisement” to add more community members. School board Chairman Stu Sklar noted that in some communities, hiring a special education director would fall to the board, but in Harvard, the superintendent is in charge of the search. Once the search committee settles on a finalist, it submits its recommendation to the school board, which then generally approves it, board member Willie Wickman added.
Jefferson said that the search committee has advertised the job opening in the Boston Globe, and in educational magazines.
“We have received 17 applications, and many are very strong,” with a number of current directors from other towns applying for the vacancy, he said. The search committee has sifted through the applications and has come up with six semi-finalists, who will be interviewed further. Jefferson said that those would be further narrowed down to the top two or three finalists. These candidates will be asked to visit the schools for more interviews, with the search committee members conducting site visits of their current school districts as well.
New school board member Keith Cheveralls praised Horn as having done an outstanding job during his tenure in Harvard. He noted that the position has a salary range of $88,000 to $102,000, and asked Jefferson if he has taken the change in personnel as an opportunity to look at the job description, and to consider if there are other ways to fill the schools’ needs. Cheveralls also urged Jefferson to “reach out to the community” to add new members to the search committee, saying that such a gesture would broaden the committee’s outlook and help “cement bonds” between the schools and the town.
Jefferson said that the job description for the special education director was a fairly standard one, with clear-cut duties in overseeing special education programs and staff. As for beefing up the search group, Jefferson repeated that he would consider the matter.
