Local superintendent candidates appear before Lynn board

LYNN – The tedious series of question-and-answer sessions are over for the Lynn School Committee, and a Friday morning snowstorm has given the board a long weekend to ponder who will be the city’s next superintendent.In front of the largest turnout yet, the final three candidates to replace retiring Superintendent Nicholas Kostan took center stage Thursday night, as a depleted school board quizzed each candidate on their credentials and ideas for the future.Classical High School Principal Warren White joined Kostan’s two deputies Jaye Warry and Catherine Latham for the last day of interviews, despite committee member John Ford missing the interviews because of a family emergency.In addition to Ford’s absence, prior scheduling obligations forced committee member Donna Coppola to miss White’s interview, while Committee Chair Mayor Edward J. Clancy Jr. missed the majority of Latham’s and all of Warry’s interviews for similar reasons.Questions Thursday night mainly focused on the upcoming budget negotiations and how candidates would deal with an estimated $5 million deficit, and what sort of improvements and goals they would set for the district going forward.All three candidates gave similar answers when discussing the budget and contract negotiations, expressing a desire to keep the classroom in tact come budget time, but also acknowledged that the reality of the situation is that financial issues will most likely force layoffs, leading to higher class sizes and a potential consolidation of services and programs.Each candidate also vowed to examine and re-vamp Lynn Vocational and Technical Institute to feature updated shops teaching students for the jobs of today.It wasn’t until candidates began discussing their own personal goals and objectives that individual ideas for the community came to the forefront.Warry spoke about a need to be more careful and creative with grant money and federal funds so that the district can begin improving its depleted school facilities, and expressed a desire to begin including world languages in the elementary school curriculum to introduce to students at an earlier age.”My short term goal is just to get this school system through a rough time with classrooms as unchanged as possible,” she said. “So many of our kids already speak a second language, I think we really need to build on that and introduce that before they get to middle school.”Latham preached a need to get parents more involved, and said a large part of that effort would be to hire more minority teachers and administrators to provide a comfort level and to help with translation and communication.Keeping with the idea of character education, brought to the forefront by committee member Vincent Spirito, Latham also suggested a plan that would bring successful business people in to the classrooms and students in to businesses so that they can understand how to act in the professional world and network for jobs.Crediting Kostan with being her mentor, Latham said she would take what she learned working under the superintendent, infuse her own personality and continue the success of the department.”I would bring to this job a love for the city, a love for the department, and a desire to make it better,” she said.Calling himself the “right person at the right time” to lead the school department, White set his top three priorities as instructing the students, especially in core subjects such as reading and math, improving school facilities and bolstering professional development.”It is important that everyone be focused on what we are here for, and that is instructing the students,” he said.The School Committee will take the long weekend to ponder all six candidates, Warry, White and Latham along with Taunton Superintendent Art Stellar, Ford Principal Claire Crane and former Ayer Superintendent Lore Nielsen, and will re-convene Monday at 4 p.m. for a public meeting to chose the superintendent.