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5/8/2008
WOONSOCKET - The Woonsocket Teachers' Guild has filed a grievance with the School Committee after finding out the union will not have representation on the 22-member search committee for a new superintendent.
The teachers' union joins the Rhode Island Department of Education as a second body in as many weeks to dispute its exclusion from the search to replace outgoing Superintendent Maureen Macera, who is retiring at the end of the current school year. Asked for comment on the grievance, John Boudreau, vice president of the teachers' union, said that such a matter is only discussed privately.
"We have absolutely no comment on that," he said of the grievance, heard behind closed doors at last Wednesday's School Committee meeting.
An April 23 letter from the teachers' union to School Committee Chairperson Marc Dubois, announcing the grievance, was forwarded to The Breeze last week.
When reached, Dubois forwarded inquiries to School Committee member Eleanor Nadeau.
Nadeau told The Breeze that just like RIDE, the teachers' union will be involved in only the third phase of the superintendent search, the final step in the process to find a new superintendent.
"They were invited to the reception," said Nadeau, of the final step in the process, when superintendent candidates eat a meal with the search committee and reception committee at the Woonsocket Area Career and Technical Center.
"I guess that's not good enough for them," Nadeau said, of the invitation to the reception and subsequent grievance. Nadeau said union leaders are claiming they had representation on search committees in the past, and don't believe this year should be any different.
The three phases of the search for a new superintendent, according to Dubois, are:
* Applications and preliminary interviews by administration and School Committee members, happening right now;
* The formal interview process;
* The reception committee gathering with all of the candidates meeting for a meal.
Nadeau said the 22-member superintendent search committee has representation from four groups: teachers, administrators, the community, and parents. The schools are represented by principals at the elementary, middle, and high school level.
RIDE Deputy Commissioner David Abbott, in a Breeze story detailing his organization's exclusion last week, said that Woonsocket school officials have not responded to repeated attempts for RIDE to be involved in the search for a superintendent. Dubois said that he has contacted Abbott and told him that representation on the reception committee was all that he and other members of the School Committee desired.
Abbott said that because the city's middle school is under Progressive Support and Intervention, PS&I, Woonsocket is "subject to a heightened role from the state in regard to your search for a new superintendent."
