EASTHAMPTON – The search for Easthampton's superintendent will continue after Ludlow Director of Curriculum Instruction Dr. Erica Faginski-Stark withdrew from consideration after being named the next candidate for the position. The committee initially voted 5-1 with one abstention to name Faginski-Stark the next superintendent during an April 10 meeting.

In a statement released to families through Superintendent Allison LeClair's email on April 14, School Committee Chair Cynthia Kwiecinski said that Faginski-Stark had withdrawn from consideration for the position.

"Dr. Faginski-Stark has withdrawn her name as superintendent candidate, We will be discussing our next steps at our next School Committee meeting," Kwiecinski wrote.

The date for that meeting had not been posted by press time.

Negotiations were expected to begin in an executive session on April 14 before that was cancelled.

The decision to enter negotiations with Faginski-Stark came after the Easthampton School Committee voted 5-2 against reentering negotiations with Vito Perrone, who was initially named the next superintendent with a 4-3 vote during a March 23 meeting before that offer was rescinded following a March 30 executive session.

Background

Before Perrone had officially accepted the job, the School Committee asked the police to conduct a wellness check as Perrone was not answering the phone when the committee called to offer him the job. Prior to that executive session meeting where the offer was rescinded, he addressed members of the committee as “ladies” which was perceived as a “microaggression,” during the initial negotiations.

Since the decision to rescind the offer to Perrone, the Easthampton community has spoken about the decision through protests and discussion online. The School Committee was initially supposed to discuss next steps for the superintendent search during an April 4 meeting, but the meeting filled up with 300 people, the capacity for the meeting, and had to be postponed to April 10.

The April 10 meeting

To begin the meeting, residents were given 90 minutes to participate in public comment. During the public comment session residents spoke both in favor and against the decision to rescind Perrone’s offer while many on both sides expressed their concerns with the transparency and fast-moving nature of the entire process.

Following public comment, the committee then discussed their thoughts on the situation and the next steps in the process. Kwiecinski noted that per open meeting law, the committee was only allowed to discuss what Perrone had disclosed to the public, including the “ladies” comment that received national attention and a wellness check performed by police after Perrone did not answer the phone to accept the job. She added that the committee will be able to discuss the issue openly once the executive session minutes have been released.

“It always been that we are not supposed to talk about executive session and what happens inside that session until one, the matters are settled and two, the minutes are released. So, it is not the School Committee trying to be quiet and hold information that belongs to the public, it will be released later and it does not get discussed before,” Kwiecinski said.

Kwiecinski also fought back against the notion that she was the one who drove the decision to rescind the offer to Perrone.

“It’s been stated that I’ve driven this whole mess. Although I am the chair, I do not make the decisions for this body. This body has to make these decisions together, when we have minutes released, you will be able to see who voted for what, you will be able to see who was concerned about what and that should clear up some information,” she said. “The idea that a chair is making all of these decisions is just absurd because we have so many intelligent, talented and skilled professional people.”

Member Laurie Garcia reiterated her support for Perrone to start the committee’s discussion and said no real negotiations took place with Perrone.

“Chair Kweicinski offered him the job and gave him the dollar amount. There was some surprise by him and that amount as the job had been posted with a salary range, however the top amount is reserved for candidates with more experience in the position,” she said. “That was the only so-called negotiations, which occurred after midnight with exhausted individuals on both sides of the phone.”

Garcia also said that she understood why Perrone would have fallen asleep after the interviews, leading to the eventual wellness check conducted by police.

“If anyone has ever experienced a full day of back-to-back meetings, where you have to be at your best, which is then followed by two hours of rigorous questioning you can understand how you would collapse from exhaustion and expect the call just wasn’t coming that evening,” she said. “The decision to send an officer for a wellness check was in no way done maliciously.”

Garcia added that “mistakes were made on both sides,” but Perrone’s use of the word “ladies” could have been used as a teaching point.

“I do not see it as a microaggression, but that does not mean the term is acceptable, that is when the teachable moment occurs and Dr. Perrone stated very clearly that he was sorry and would use a growth mindset, and learn from a conversation, unfortunately there was no opportunity to do so,” she said.

Member Ben Hersey said that while Perrone emerged as a “frontrunner” alongside Faginski-Stark for him before the initial vote, he was concerned about the situation in West Springfield where Perrone was not selected as the superintendent there. Hersey added that “I was looking for something I didn’t see from Dr. Perrone.”

“I had real questions about what happened with his candidacy for a job in West Springfield, I was told not to really dig into that – no one has told me what has happened there and as far as I know, no one seems to know,” he said. “But that hung over me for a bit and caused me some moments of reflection and curiosity.”

Hersey added that while many people in the Easthampton community who worked with Perrone had great things to say about him, others did not.

“I just think that it’s important that people understand that though there is incredible energy around this person, there are significant questions that I have – this is not about the executive session – this is about the information that has emerged for me in talking to people outside of the School Committee that made me feel concerned.”

Hersey also noted that he wished the process of voting on the next superintendent went differently.

“It’s very hard and extremely frustrating that we can’t communicate some of the basic things about what happened in that meeting,” he said. “I really wanted the process to slow down, and I think we really should have had a situation where all the interviews were livestreamed, and I think it would have been really valuable to take at least a day to let people weigh in on what they saw before we made a decision.”

He added that he wants the committee to be more communicative with both the teachers’ union and the students going forward.

Hersey said that since the decision to rescind the offer was made, he has received threats that prompted a police presence in his neighborhood. Member Megan Harvey, who also said she received threats, said she was concerned that residents viewed the protests as something that brought the community together.

“It’s frustrating to hear that this brought the community together in some way when my children saw the police officers at my house and have been aware the entire time. They are 11, 9 and almost 5, and it’s terrifying as a parent and really difficult to explain to a child why that would’ve been required and why we continue to have ongoing presence in our neighborhood,” Harvey said.

Harvey added that with no prior experience with any of the candidates but combined the interviews, site visits, the application and feedback from the community as the reasons she voted for Faginski-Stark.

“Dr. Perrone was not my choice for superintendent, I have seen nothing in the past week to two weeks that takes any of those four components and changes the way I saw any of that,” she said.

Member Marin Goldstein, who initially voted in favor of naming Perrone the superintendent said he was concerned with Perrone’s “unprofessional behavior” after being offered the job.

“When you are in the process of being hired for a job is the moment to put your most professional foot forward, that is the moment to show the body of people that are about to hire you that you deserve that position, I do not believe we were shown that by the way that Dr. Perrone responded to us in multiple occasions, and especially since the decision was made to rescind his offer,” he said. “No, he is not responsible for the threats that were made against our committee members, but he is responsible for starting the spiraling out of control.”

Goldstein said he was “not impressed” with the way residents jumped to conclusions without all the information. He added that he agreed with Hersey that the process moved a little too quickly.

Mayor Nicole LaChappelle said that the committee did follow the correct procedure in terms of the vote and interview timeline.

“The process was legal, it was legitimate, it was advertised and it met all of the state regulations around,” she said.

Kwiecinski added that the process followed was the same one that was used when LeClair was hired.

Following the discussion, the committee then voted 5-2 against reentering negotiations with Perrone, with Garcia and member Shannon Dunham voting against. The committee then voted 5-1 with Dunham opposed and Garcia abstaining, in favor of offering the job to Faginski-Stark.