School board balks as Doyle controls search for superintendent

PAWTUCKET - Mayor James Doyle has declared he's in the city's school superintendent search process, a move that is not sitting well with some School Committee members.

Doyle told members of the School Committee in an Oct. 15 letter, "I have decided to organize a search committee that will represent the entire community.

"The purpose of this search committee is to assist and advise the School Committee in the task of securing the best possible candidate to serve as Pawtucket's next superintendent."

Acting School Committee Chairman James Chellel told The Valley Breeze he planned to sit down with Doyle during the early part of this week as he tries to avoid a showdown over whether Doyle's administration or the School Committee has the authority to set up a search committee.

"I want to show that we're working together on this, but I do have reservations about the mayor taking this over," said Chellel.

There's no question that selecting a new superintendent falls under the purview of the School Committee, said Chellel, but the questions of who should set up the parameters of the search to find outgoing Superintendent Hans Dellith's replacement are a little more fuzzy.

"I've asked our legal counsel for an opinion on it," he said.

School Committee member Joanne Bonollo also asserted the School Committee's sole authority in selecting Pawtucket's next superintendent after 12 years with Dellith at the helm, but stopped short of saying the School Committee has the authority to run the selection process.

The matter of the superintendent search is on the agenda for a special meeting of the School Committee scheduled for tonight, Oct. 28, and is one of several items on the docket for the evening.

Bonollo is the one who called for a discussion tonight over the content of Doyle's letter. Bonollo said Monday she is upset because she believes Doyle, who "does not have a vested interest" in the choice of the next superintendent because both he and his children attended private school, is trying for a "political appointment" as school chief.

"He's talking about amending the City Charter to have an appointed School Committee rather than an elected one," said Bonollo. "I think he's trying to take the voice away from the children of this city and the parents of those children.

Bonollo said that Doyle's "agenda" in setting forth the makeup of a search committee would be to find a superintendent who would "agree with him to cut, cut, cut" from the school budget, she said, leaving Pawtucket's students with degraded learning opportunities.

Doyle, though, says his move is not an attempt to "take over," as School Committee members have charged, but simply to "assist" the School Committee in a very difficult task.

"To my knowledge this hasn't happened before and it's a shame it hasn't," said Doyle, who maintains that with the current fiscal constraints the city is currently facing, it would be best to include all parties with an interest in how money is spent in the search process.

Chellel said he and several other School Committee members were initially "shocked" when they received the letter from Doyle seizing control of the School Committee selection process.

"I hope it was just an oversight on the part of the mayor that no one from the teachers' union was included as part of the selection committee," said Chellel, who is also questioning Doyle's inclusion of someone from Rhode Island Commissioner of Education Deborah Gist's office.

Chellel said that Gist's "surprising" letter to all Rhode Island superintendents last week calling for the elimination of seniority-based teaching assignments has School Committee members wondering why she should be included in the process of selecting a new school chief.

"Here's a person who has only been on the job for a couple of months, praising East Providence for everything they've done, going on talk radio supporting what the East Providence School Committee has done," said Chellel, referring to the East Providence school board's decision to unilaterally cut teacher salaries. "Instead of working with the unions she's alienating them."

Chellel also has a problem with the relationship developed between Gist and Providence Superintendent Thomas Brady, a man Pawtucket's acting School Committee chairman calls "extremely anti-union."

Doyle said Monday that Gist had expressed to him in the past an interest in assisting with a search for Dellith's replacement if the position was to be vacated, and that was why he included her office as part of his search committee.

School Committee members are also upset that Doyle has declared that a 12-member selection committee would include just two out of the seven members of the School Committee to serve.

"All seven of us will be part of this search committee," stated Chellel, who told The Breeze he has "no problem with other specifics" set forth by Doyle.

According to Doyle, a selection committee, which will be charged with finding someone who can work well on a host of different tasks and responsibilities as he or she moves city schools in a positive direction, should be made up of two community business leaders, two Pawtucket residents, two School Committee members, one member of the City Council, two current Pawtucket school administrators, a representative from the mayor's office, another from Gist's office, and a superintendent from a neighboring community.

"I truly believe only through such a committee process can we be sure to find the best superintendent to lead our students and our school system over the next decade," wrote Doyle on Oct. 15.

Doyle told The Breeze this week that he is not trying to exclude some School Committee members from the process. Instead, he said, the two committee members serving on the search committee could report back at any time the progress of the search.

Doyle's letter came two days after an Oct. 13 School Committee meeting during which a contentious debate over finding Dellith's replacement ended with no resolution.

At the Oct. 13 meeting, School Committeeman Joseph Knight's suggestion that at least one person from Doyle's administration and the one from the Pawtucket City Council be included was met with scorn by committee member Amy Breault-Zolt, who called the proposal "totally outrageous," and member Nicole Nordquist, who said she "wants to keep politics" out of the selection process.

Bonollo said this week that while Doyle and City Council members who don't have children in Pawtucket schools should be excluded from the search committee, she believes any council members who have children in the schools should be considered.

Dellith, for his part, did not offer much in the way of guidance in finding his replacement after 12 years at the helm of Pawtucket schools, but did say that there are qualified people throughout the city who have the ability "to find somebody who can help Pawtucket."