Woodstock
“Over the last couple years, the community has shown more interest in being involved with processes and they have asked us to be more transparent and inclusive when we can be more inclusive,” said Paige Hiller, chairwoman of the Woodstock Elementary School Board and co-chairwoman of the search committee that identified the two finalists for the Windsor Central Supervisory Union job.
“We have to be careful not to have too many cooks in the kitchen, because you can get in trouble that way as well, but at the same time I think it’s important for as many people as possible to meet the person who’s going to be in charge of the school district.”
One finalist, Mary Beth Banios, who currently is the assistant superintendent at Shrewsbury Public Schools in Shreswbury, Mass., will participate at a public forum from 5:30 p.m. to 6:15 p.m. today at the Woodstock Union Middle/High School’s Teagle Library.
The other finalist, Jahmal Mosley, currently assistant superintendent of curriculum and administration at Sharon Public Schools in Sharon, Mass., will participate in a public forum from 5:30 p.m. to 6:15 p.m. on Friday. That forum also will be held in the Teagle Library.
Hiller said that, while advertising the post from September through January, the search committee received about 30 applications from candidates from areas including Vermont and Pennsylvania, and conducted interviews with five candidates.
The fact that Banios and Mosley currently work in districts about 45 miles from each other, both west of Boston, is a coincidence, Hiller said.
“It’s amazing how they both have similar strengths,” she said. “They both work for level-one districts and they’re both assistant superintendents.”
Mosley has lived and worked in Vermont before, in the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union as assistant principal at Brattleboro Union High School from 2006 to 2011, according to his public LinkedIn profile.
He received a doctorate of education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2010, and worked in Massachusetts for the past several years, as a high school principal in Somerset until 2014, when he took his current post in Sharon.
In a candidate statement he presented to the Woodstock-area supervisory union, he said he “is no stranger to Vermont as he still maintains a residence in the state. When he has the opportunity, he often travels to Vermont to visit with friends and enjoy the many activities Vermont has to offer.”
Banios received a master’s in education from the University of Massachusetts in Lowell in 1990, according to her LinkedIn profile. She worked as both assistant principal and principal in the Shrewsbury school system between 2001 and 2004, when she began a six-year stint as an elementary principal at Harvard (Mass.) Public Schools.
She also has spent six years as an education consultant and, according to her candidate statement posted on the WCSU website, has done work for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
The statement says she “and her family have long enjoyed vacationing in Vermont and are interested in a move to the state to enjoy all that it has to offer on a more permanent basis.”
Messages left for Mosley and Banios on Wednesday were not immediately returned.
Worth and the supervisory union board announced over the summer that, after five years as superintendent, she plans to retire at the end of her current, one-year contract.
“She created a base for us to build upon, which was curriculum development, consistencies in those programs throughout the elementary schools, and she was very strong at developing evaluations of principals and doing regular walk-throughs. Those are things that had not been laid out before she came,” Hiller said.
Hiller said the search for Worth’s successor will benefit from having input from the various stakeholders in the community.
“We had a vision of who we wanted this person to be, as well as what we want to continue. As well as what we’ve fallen short in, and who can help us where we’ve fallen short,” Hiller said.
Members of the public will be invited to fill out feedback forms following the meet-the candidate forums today and tomorrow.
The candidates will spend part of those days touring the schools, and meeting with administrators and staff.
“I think we’re at a tipping point, to be quite honest,” Hiller said. “I think that we’re really looking for someone who can move us forward and who can move us into the next level of education and successful outcomes — someone who can move us forward to where we rate in the state of Vermont, compared to other school systems.”
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.