Maria Geryk at 3/31 Finance Committee meeting with Mike Morris, Sean Mangano (just before the fall)
A joint meeting of the Amherst Pelham Regional School Committee and Union 26 voted unanimously to hire Ray & Associates as a head hunter search consultant to have a new Superintendent in place by July 1st, the start of the FY 18 fiscal year.
The winning bid was $17,000 but it was not the lowest one as the only other bidder (at $14,000) could not handle the ambitious timeline of the Request For Proposals.
Ray & Associates was founded in 1975 and currently has 170 "associates" who make up the firm. Dr. Michael Rush put on a masterful homespun performance at the January 10th meeting and assured committee members his company's final short list of candidates would not embarrass his firm or the Region.
Dr. Michael Rush presents to Region-Union 26 on January 10th
Which of course is a good thing considering how embarrassing the demise of Maria Geryk played out before a w-i-d-e audience, which of course will be available to potential candidates via a simple Google search.
So at least they will know full well what they are getting themselves into.
Dr. Rush will interview by phone all school committee members in the next few days and he will return to Amherst on January 23rd and 24th to hold stakeholder interviews with teacher, PTOs, Lions/Rotary Clubs, etc and his firm will also provide an online survey available for any member of the general public.
The deadline for potential candidates is March 3 and based on his firm's 40 year experience he initially expects 70 respondents, which they will whittle down to 8-12 for presentation to the School Committee via one way video and then narrowed down to two or three for a final in-person interview.
He suggested the School Committees choose a new Superintendent by March 27 so they can give plenty of notice to their current District before relocating to Amherst for July 1st.
Salary is of course a major carrot so the Committee will have to quickly decide a range to be included in the nationwide search which is expected to cost an additional $10,000 to $15,000 in advertising.
Safe bet the proposed salary will continue to keep the Superintendent's position as the highest paid in town, even though they "do it for the kids."