Marblehead board to interview super search firms

MARBLEHEAD – The Marblehead School Committee will interview three firms who want to help it search for its next superintendent of schools. Interviews are scheduled for the committee meeting next Thursday.Committee members met Thursday morning to rank the four search firms that responded to their request for proposals. They will not look at the financial proposals until after the interviews, so that they will not be biased by cost savings. The committee budgeted $25,000 as the limit for a search consultant.Interviewees include Future Management Systems of Beverly, Massachusetts Association of School Committees in Boston and Hazard Young Attea and Associates of Rosemont, Ill. The New England School Development Council of Marlborough, which helped the committee find Superintendent of Schools Paul Dulac five years ago, was not tapped for an interview.School Committee member Kathy Leonardson said NESDEC failed to clearly identify its lead consultant for the process and failed to say if it would assist with a second search if the first one failed to yield a qualified candidate, two items the committee listed in its criteria for the search firms.FMS was ranked first by all four members in attendance: Leonardson, Jonathan Lederman, who served as chair in the absence of Chairman EuRim Chun, Patricia Blackmer and Dick Nohelty.Lederman expressed a concern about the MASC, since they might be hesitant to recruit a superintendent in a district where they were working. He said the committee should ask each firm what they have done to recruit superintendent candidates who weren’t looking for a job and he questioned whether MASC consulted for towns comparable to Marblehead.Blackmer said the MASC had an understanding of Massachusetts school administration that could be valuable. The vote to interview the MASC was 3-1, with Lederman opposed.The vote to interview HYA was unanimous, despite Blackmer’s observation that their proposed lead consultant was an administrator from a competing district. Lederman said their being out-of-state could be advantageous in a nationwide search and they can be asked about their choice of a lead consultant at the interview.The committee will not require residency, Chun said last week, but residency will be “part of the financial package discussion” with the candidate.