2 locals vie for top school job

John Howell
Posted 2/5/15

An initial round of interviews of seven candidates for superintendent of schools should be completed by next Wednesday, Rosemary Healey, legal counsel and school director of human resources said …

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2 locals vie for top school job

Posted

An initial round of interviews of seven candidates for superintendent of schools should be completed by next Wednesday, Rosemary Healey, legal counsel and school director of human resources said yesterday.

Healey said the five-member School Committee is conducting the interviews, which generally last about an hour.

Of the pool of candidates that includes at least one out-of-state candidate, two local candidates are known: current superintendent Richard D’Agostino and William McCaffrey, director of the Warwick Area Career and Technical Center.

D’Agostino, who served as interim superintendent after Peter Horoschak was forced to leave the district without explanation in September of 2012 and went on to be named superintendent without a posting of the position, is looking to hold on to the job.

McCaffrey, whose name surfaced in the last two weeks, confirmed Tuesday he is a candidate. He chose not to elaborate on why he is interested in the job. He had not been interviewed as of yesterday.

Nonetheless, who will become the next superintendent has generated local discussion and a fair share of rumors about the selection process.

“I’m well aware of Bill’s [McCaffrey] interest,” Mayor Scott Avedisian said yesterday. And while he said he thought McCaffrey “would be fantastic,” he said he doesn’t want to turn the selection process into a popularity contest.

“I’ve tried not to turn the race for superintendent into a campaign,” he said.

Asked in broader terms what qualities he would like to see in the superintendent, Avedisian said he is looking for someone “with long-term vision and short-term goals and gains.”

He expressed some frustration that he has not received a plan to bring Chromebooks, a combination computer tablet, to all 9th graders. In his inaugural address, Avedisian said he was working with schools to make the Chromebooks available, as has been done in other school districts.

“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” he said, suggesting a Warwick plan could be a copy of what is being done elsewhere. So far, he said D’Agostino hasn’t produced a plan. He said he is also looking for feedback from D’Agostino on public charter schools.

Avedisian has been supportive of the mayoral academy form of charter schools but backed off that proposal in favor of public charter schools when the academy plan met resistance from Warwick schools and the City Council. Opposition was based on the premise that an academy would draw state funds that would otherwise go to the district. A public charter school, on the other hand, would keep funds in the district while enabling the district to explore different ways of operating and serving population groups.

Avedisian cautioned, “It’s not fair to everyone to compare [them] to past superintendents. But, he added, it is not hard to think of the late Robert J. Shapiro whose commitment to the system had him in and out of schools daily and in close contact with the city when it came to student safety and as to whether schools should close because of snow.

Asked what he would like to see in a superintendent, George Landrie, president of the Warwick Teachers Union, said, “That has nothing to do with me.” Landrie said the selection of a superintendent is up to the School Committee.

Healey said the committee is acting alone in the selection process and, if they follow past procedures, she expects the candidates would all be asked the same set of questions. She thought interviews would vary in length, as there would be flexibility to expand on questions and candidates would have the opportunity to expound on their answers. She thought the committee might whittle the seven candidates down and have a second round of interviews. However, she added, “They could [also] make the decision at any point.”

A resident of North Scituate, McCaffrey started his career as a Pilgrim High School business teacher in 1997. He was a business teacher in Toll Gate from 1998 to 2000 and then went on to serve four years as cooperative education coordinator at the Career Center. He was principal of the system’s summer school in 2004 and assistant principal at Gorton in 2004 and 2005. In 2005 he was named assistant principal at Vets, a position he held until 2008, when he was named career center director.

Under his direction, the center has been awarded more than $3.7 million in grants for a variety of projects. Initiatives include the Warwick After School Academy where participants receive job training in emerging occupations.

In an interview in October of last year, when the committee said it would post the position, D’Agonstino cited his accomplishments of the past two years. He listed, among other things, the online portal Aspen that allows parents to monitor their child’s grades and progress; completion of fire code improvements to most schools and his efforts in steering a commission that advocated the closing of Vets and the combining of Gorton and Aldrich Junior Highs at the former Vets as a response to declining enrollment.

The committee elected not to vote on the plan, instead seeking bids for an outside consultant to perform an assessment of the system. The committee has yet to sign a contract for the work.

Comments

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  • JohnStark

    The committee decided to hire an outside consultant on December 13, 2013. The fact that "The committee has yet to sign a contract for the work" is now beyond a complete abdication of responsibility. Rather, one must now question if fourteen months of foot-dragging is deliberate. If this lack of action is not deliberate, the school committee is guilty of gross incompetence. If it is deliberate, legal action should be taken on behalf of taxpayers.

    Thursday, February 5, 2015 Report this

  • Norm88

    Legal action...LMAO...

    Thursday, February 5, 2015 Report this

  • JohnStark

    OK Norm, is the foot dragging deliberate or not? And I'm begging you, please don't give us "...these things take time.." It's not rocket science, but it IS time that the SC, supt, and mayor stopped hiding under their desks. In the Dreaded Private Sector, this would have been completed in six months or the board would have been replaced.

    Thursday, February 5, 2015 Report this

  • Norm88

    It for sure has not been handled in a timely manor at all... What I find funny is your complaint of the waist of money and time which it is and you want legal action taken which will also cost the tax payers money... My solve is to get the sheep of Warwick to pay attention the next election cycle and clean house....

    Friday, February 6, 2015 Report this

  • JohnStark

    Maybe not. This is right up the alley of Common Cause RI. No dispute from me concerning the ballot, but such things require an informed citizenry. And I query again, Deliberate or not?

    Friday, February 6, 2015 Report this

  • emark1

    "So far, he said D’Agostino hasn’t produced a plan." This, in a nutshell, describes Dr. D'Agostino. He has been in the Superintendent position since 2012, and has shown no vision and little competence. The online Aspen portal that he describes has been a total flop, as the program itself is of poor quality. It is so lousy that at my friends' school, (Gorton), 80-90% of the teachers choose to pay $50 out of pocket each year to buy a better program that gives parents better online access to their kids grades. The two attempts at closing schools have been a complete disaster. He could have easily gotten the closures either time if he and those around him had the slightest competence and political savvy. All they had to do was go to the public meetings, present a reasonable and detailed plan, and then listen compassionately. You sit, listen to the anger, take the shots, and be understanding. You say something along the lines of, "Thank you, I understand how emotional and difficult this is for the community, we will carefullly consider your comments." Chances are, once everyone's emotional energy is spent you will be able to go ahead and do what you want anyway.

    What you don't do is what the Superintendent D'Agostino and his fellow administrators did at the school closure public hearings:

    -Show a powerpoint presentation where all of the numbers and figures are too small for the audience to read and keep pointing to it and saying "as you can clearly see," then acknowledge that no one can read it, and then angrily tell them that they all should have downloaded and printed out the powerpoint and brought it with them.

    -Show a powerpoint presentation where the screen image is never changed from the title screen, and the superintendent and other administration read an incomprehensible script to the upset parents and taxpayers for over an hour.

    -Make ridiculous claims that everyone knows is not true, like "It only takes 10 minutes to bus a student from Oakland Beach to Tollgate," and then not understand why everyone is upset.

    -Get angry and yell at the audience for not believing him.

    -When he is called a liar, puts the head of the City Council on the spot in the middle of the public hearing, and asks if he has ever lied to her. Dumbest political move I've ever seen in a public meeting. For the record, Donna Travis's response was "Up until now."

    -Present a plan that is woefully incomplete, with almost no details as to how the closures and the transferring of students would actually be done. The planning basically amounted to "we will monitor the situation." Compare the plans they put forth to other districts that have made complex school closures, and you will be shocked at the difference.

    -Talk all about money, and nothing about students, parents, and quality of education. Actually say that larger schools and class sizes could be beneficial.

    -Not even plan enough to be able to tell parents how the district lines would be drawn. Not anticipate that a parent might ask the question "What school will my child be going to next year." Respond with "We will tell you after we approve the plan."

    -Act in a clearly condescending and dismissive manner towards any questions asked by women. Give a "Now you listen here young lady" type attitude to these women. (I've actually had a conversation with a female school district employee who said that before meetings female employees would give their questions to their male counterparts to ask, because if they asked, D'Agostino would simply ignore them.)

    D'Agostino is part of the old boy's club that has been running the Warwick school district for decades. They show no care for the students, parents, teachers, and taxpayers of this city. The previous Superintendent was paid off and asked to leave for undisclosed reasons. D'Agostino became the acting superintedent, then the interim superintendent, and then without any search or fanfare, was declared the actual superintendent. There were serious questions about pay, as it appeared that D'Agostino was actually being paid as the director of special education, and as the superintendent at the same time. When a young man asked at a school committee meeting how much D'Agostino was making, D'Agostino refused to answer and said it is public record, go look it up. When the man went to request these records from the school department, he was told that it would take hundreds of hours to put the information together, and that he would have to pay for that. He was told that when he gave them a check (it was over $500 dollars), they would give him the public information.

    As a taxpayer, I am outraged by this. D'Agostino has no respect for the people who pay his salary, to the point where he thinks a citizen should have to pay to find out what we are truly paying him. Something is quite rotten here.

    He is sitting on top of a rotten pile- look below him and you have the Director of Secondary Education, Dennis Mullen. Right under him is the Coordinator for Math and Science, who is Ryan Mullen. Nepotism, at an in your face kind of level.. Ryan was pink slipped as a math teacher and was going to lose his job, when this position became available. He was a young teacher and did not meet the minimum requirements of having a master's degree that the job required. The job description was rewritten so that it no longer required a master's degree, and Ryan interviewed and beat out a field of highly qualified candidates to get the position. Now he works for his dad. It is unbelievable that such a seemingly clear case of nepotism was not even questioned in Warwick. A real superintendent would have questioned this, and not allowed his district to be tarnished by such bald-faced illegal activity.

    Dr. D'Agostino, though, is not a real superintendent.

    It is time that we had a real superintendent.

    Thanks for reading,

    Ed.

    Monday, February 9, 2015 Report this

  • sadforspeced

    You have said it all Ed, although I do disagree about your comments regarding the Mullens. But you can add that with a new superintendent you will get someone who will respond to emails and follow up on phone calls. Also, can't emphasis enough that he is never in the schools nor around after 3:00. Bill Mc is a great choice with his work ethic, forward thinking skills, caring manner and integrity.

    Thursday, February 12, 2015 Report this