EASTHAMPTON – After several nights of interviews and site visits, the Easthampton School Committee agreed to enter negotiations with interim West Springfield Superintendent Vito Perrone for the position of the district’s new superintendent, with current Superintendent Allison LeClair set to retire at the end of the school year, before that offer was later rescinded.

Over the course of three days, the committee also interviewed Erica Faginski-Stark, Ludlow’s director of curriculum and instruction and Jonathan Bruno, the director of learning and teaching at the Berkshire Hills Regional School District. Each day included a site visit around the district, followed by the interviews, which were broken into three parts, an opening statement, answering questions from the committee and a closing statement.

Following the decision to name Perrone the next superintendent, it was revealed that the School Committee had rescinded the offer. Many members of the Easthampton, MA Group Page Facebook group decried the decision and planned protests on April 3. The School Committee also discussed the superintendent position during a meeting on April 4. Coverage of those events and the decision will appear in the April 13 edition of The Reminder.

The interviews

In his opening statement, Perrone spoke highly of his experience during his site visit before the interview.

“When I walked in this building today, I felt like I was coming home. I don’t think I could have kept the smile off my face if I tried. I have so many memories of this community and this building, even though they were eight years ago, even as I was floating around town from meeting to meeting,” he said.

Each candidate was asked what they thought the superintendent should be in the community and Perrone said it was all about connections.

“The most important piece of superintendency is making connections and engaging with people, including the community, the stake holders, teachers, paraprofessionals, custodial staff. We have to engage, and we can’t forget about the kids. Nobody wants to be a superintendent if you can’t engage with the kids, that’s what it’s all about,” he said.

Faginski-Stark said superintendents need to have a “multi-faceted” role.

“The superintendent needs to understand the needs of the students – all of the students, not just the aggregate population. A superintendent needs to be a supportive leader, we need to be able to reach out to our assistant principals, our teacher leaders, our building principals and be that mentor and confidant to have those conversations about what’s happening and support them around decisions and guide them,” she said.

She also noted the importance of the financial aspect of managing the district and having strong relationships with the police and fire departments.

“They’re also a stakeholder to the community and the face of a community. A superintendent needs to show that they operate with an ethic of care and are true to who they are and what they believe,” Faginski-Stark said.

Bruno said the superintendent’s goal is to be “boots on the ground.”

“Being a present member of the community, being open and willing to discuss all sorts of topics with people and keeping an open mind. The biggest piece is to understand what the community’s needs and you can’t understand the community’s needs unless you’re participating in the community,” he said.

The candidates were also each asked about how important data was in determining student achievement and performance.

Faginski-Stark said districts should be using data that goes beyond the MCAS to help students be where they need to by the time they graduate.

“At the core of a public school, we need to think about student performance data and making sure we are collecting valid data. We need to be able to measure from year to year or pre and post during the school year what student performance look like,” she said. “We need to use that performance data to create a wholistic picture of who the students are, and that data is what should drive how we prioritize our funds.”

Bruno said data is important to understand the needs of students in the district and how best to meet them.

“The priority in the school district is the students, you want to have data on the students that shares your understanding of what the needs are of our students. We need to use student data to see what our needs are and then determine what our budgets are based on the student needs and bring in community input,” he said.

Perrone said that assessing the data must go beyond MCAS and accountability to those standards.

“I think about triangulation of data and looking at various data sets to make sure we are using the data in all its facets to meet the needs of the kids in front of us. We have to identify needs and dial those needs in to determine what interventions need to be put in place,” he said. “We all know what happened two years ago, we are still recovering from the pandemic and that is not simply about academics, it’s also about social-emotional, it’s also about mental health, there’s a lot of people that are not okay and it’s hard to access the curriculum when you’re not okay. It needs to be about our local data.”

Each candidate was also asked about how they would address a polarizing political issue in a school environment.

While not a political issue, Bruno discussed the difficulty he had as a special education teacher trying to implement reading as a science in a school he worked in previously.

“I worked in a school that did not teach phonics-based reading literacy education and I was the learning coach so my job was to be the special education teacher for 85 students. I worked with the staff and provided [professional development] to bring them on a journey for two years so they integrated all of their knowledge and new knowledge, and their reading scores went up, their MCAS scores went up, they had fewer disruptions from a group of students that I worked with a lot,” he said.

Bruno added that the first year of implementing that reading program was “very difficult with a lot of arguments and discussions.

Perrone spoke to his experience of navigating sensitive political issues with an example from the fallout of the 2016 presidential election, which led to an increase in xenophobic and racist behavior at West Springfield High School.

“We had a problem and Vito couldn’t solve it by himself. We identified the problem. We collaborated, we worked together and a strong contingent of kids came up and they became leaders with a strong contingent of teachers to say, ‘No, not here,’” he said. “We can’t let things hide, we have to get after it, we have to address it and we have to move forward in a positive way.”

Faginski-Stark discussed a situation involving a marginalized student and a student with an “upper hand.”

“First, I met with each family individually and we also talked about restorative practice in a way to help a social worker with the student, with the hope to educate to decrease that polarization, and also speak to the student who do not feel people were standing up for them, and we put a safety plan was put in place,” she said. “At the very least what has to happen was to say these are the rules within the context of school and we have to make sure every student is accepted and treated equitably.”

Perrone was straight to the point in his closing statement about wanting to be the superintendent.

“I think about the opportunity to be here and end my career here, my daughter’s a junior, I’m going to have two in college, I’ve got six, seven years left, and I could think of nothing better than to end it in Easthampton,” he said.

The deliberations

Prior to the committee’s discussion, the committee reviewed comments from where each candidate is currently working. These comments were taken from parents, teachers, administrative staff and more.

Many of the comments received from West Springfield staff spoke glowingly of Perrone and his time there. Committee member Ben Hersey read the comments and one commentor said that Perrone was “the best superintendent I ever worked with.”

Comments from West Springfield Mayor William Reichelt and the West Springfield School Committee also spoke highly of Perrone and noted that he was not a finalist for the superintendency there.

“The mayor said, ‘he built a relationship with the town, before Vito it was us versus them, but he helped bring people together. It’s not us versus them, it’s we.’ He was not a finalist for the West Springfield Superintendent job, the mayor and the School Committee believe it was a political decision and certain people wanted to go in a new direction,” Hersey said. “He knows kids, takes a lot of pride in what he does. Despite his difficulties, he has stayed steady, professional, still positive after not getting an interview for the superintendent job.”

Comments from other members of West Springfield staff, including the building principals, lamented that he had not become the permanent superintendent there.

“Our district is making a big mistake in letting him go,” one teacher wrote.

During the committee’s discussion, members narrowed down the deliberations down to Faginski-Stark and Perrone.

Committee member Megan Harvey said that while there weren’t as many points of action referenced with Perrone, his passion stood out.

“I think it’s immediately obvious that his passion and enthusiasm for students is enormous, I don’t think there is a bottom to that well,” she said.

She also noted that many people in the district, including administration, gave “an early, strong support for Vito Perrone.” In a more recent push, Harvey said comments were in favor of Faginski-Stark.

Mayor Nicole LaChappelle said Reichelt’s letter of support for Perrone “changed” her perspective on his candidacy.

“Our lawyers would not be happy if I did what the West Springfield mayor did. For my thinking of it, the approach of where he looks at what resources can be brought together, it’s what we need now,” she said. “We need coaching and trust, and that kind of unique, catalytic leader. We don’t have our special stuff and Dr. Perrone checks the boxes for me.”

LaChappelle added that Perrone could help rebuild trust with the schools.

“This is where we have great schools and we have housing coming on and we don’t have special stuff that people can trust our schools, we’re in a deficit of trust and I think Dr. Perrone has the best chance of doing that,” she said.

Committee Chair Cynthia Kwiencinski said she was in favor of naming Faginski-Stark the next superintendent.

“You can’t just be a leader that supports everybody and is wonderful. But if we’re missing direction and we have a problem, I need a leader who has 100 ideas in their pocket, and that’s what I see in Dr. Erica Faginski-Stark,” she said.

With a 4-3 vote the committee agreed to enter contract negotiations with Perrone for the superintendent position, before the offer was later rescinded.