A consulting firm hired by the Concord School District to get feedback from the community about what qualities they would like to see in the next superintendent of schools will present its findings to the Concord School Board at a special meeting on Thursday.
Representatives from the New England School Development Council spent the month of February holding focus groups with staff at district schools and parents and students. They also sent out an online survey where people could provide feedback.
Participants were asked to answer two central questions: “What qualities, characteristics, knowledge and skills you are looking for the new Concord superintendent to possess? In his or her first year, what are the tasks and challenges you see the new superintendent facing?”
Data pulled together from the surveys and focus groups will be used by a screening committee made up of parents, staff and students to help guide them through the interviewing process for the new superintendent.
The district’s goal is to have both a new superintendent and Concord High School principal selected by April.
The deadline for applying to be the next superintendent of the Concord School District ends on Wednesday. The deadline for applying to be Concord High’s principal is Friday.
Screening committee groups will interview candidates for the positions and select a few finalists for the school board, which will make the final selections, to consider.
During the first focus group meeting earlier this month at Broken Ground School, seven people showed up.
Lynn Hand, a former substitute teacher in the district, said she wanted to come to the meeting to learn more about what other community members were looking for in a superintendent.
“I like to voice my opinion with other people and bounce ideas around,” she said. “I learn a lot from listening to others.”
Hand told the group that a priority for her in a candidate was someone with experience working with diverse populations of students. Concord has received more new Americans per capita than any other New Hampshire city.
“I hope they have experience in dealing with people from every country,” Hand said. “We have a very changing demographic here of people who are new Americans from different countries, who speak different languages. It’s a melting pot here, and they have very special needs. Often children will come to school and they haven’t spoken a word of English.”
Other community members who attended that focus group said they hope that the new superintendent will be trained in working with students who have experienced trauma and students with disabilities. They hoped that the superintendent would have a passion for the Rundlett Middle School redesign project.
Others said they wanted the new superintendent to be courageous and a good listener.
They said a major task for the new superintendent’s first year would be winning back the trust of families in the district after a challenging year.
Concord School District’s leadership has been in flux in recent months following the arrest of a well-known teacher on sexual assault charges last April.
The Concord School Board hired an independent attorney to investigate administrators’ handling of reports concerning special education teacher Howie Leung. After the school board received the report, it voted to terminate the contracts of both district superintendent Terri Forsten and Concord High School principal Tom Sica.
Career educator Frank Bass of Manchester has led the district as interim superintendent since Forsten’s departure in early November. Shortly after, Michael Reardon, retired headmaster of Pembroke Academy, was appointed as interim Concord High principal.
NESDEC officials said they could not provide numbers to the Monitor on how many community members attended focus groups or on the total tally of people who responded to the online survey before they presented those numbers to the Concord School Board on Thursday.
NESDEC Executive Searching and Planning Associate Carolyn Burke said during the firm’s first focus group meeting on Feb. 4 that almost 200 people had responded to the survey within its first day online.
