By Neale Gulley
The Tonawanda News
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North Tonawanda residents who want a say in the city’s next superintendent of schools are being encouraged to attend two upcoming meetings with search consultant Dr. Clark Godshall.
Godshall, district superintendent for Orleans Niagara BOCES, will host two upcoming community sessions at the Alumni Student Activity Center, 405 Meadow Drive at 7 p.m. March 31 and 10 a.m. April 10.
Godshall, in a press release, said he is seeking input from the community to develop priorities in the search as well as characteristics for consideration when interviewing candidates to replace outgoing Superintendent Vincent Vecchiarella.
The city’s Board of Education will also host more than one public forum in June, though the dates have not yet been determined.
“I think the big difference is when they went through and did the search for Vince they used a consultant who was just between the board members and (an individual),” Board of Education President Jeffrey Glatz said. “It wasn’t an open thing that sought input from parents and stakeholders and booster clubs and things like that. We’re going to open it up. It’s going to be something that everyone is invested in.”
Godshall is appointed by the state to conduct administrator searches and has conducted about 30 of them in his career, helping to place some 150 administrators, he said.
“Part of my state function is to conduct searches for school officers at no cost to the district,” he said. “The board wants this very open, and that’s why I’m starting out with the public forums.”
He said the salary being offered is up to $170,000 but that the district won’t necessarily have to pay that much. Rather, he said it’s intended to open up the pool of candidates.
Ideally, he and the board with public input will whittle a pool of 6 to 8 candidates down to 3 or 4.
Then, stakeholder groups would meet with each finalist and provide strengths and weaknesses back to the board. Local media will also be offered the opportunity for one-on-one interviews with each finalist.
The application period closes June 4 with a final candidate to be selected by end of June. Then it’s on to contract talks.
The only current board member to have been a party to the last search was former Board of Education President Christine Porto.
Vecchiarella publicly announced his intention to retire at the board meeting in the second week of January. The move will be effective September 17. His 35-year career has included years spent as a teacher, guidance director, principal and assistant superintendent in various districts across the state. He has spent about 25 of those years in management roles.
His contract will expire in step with his retirement. Vecchiarella has spent four years in the district’s top executive spot, initiating North Tonawanda’s current $48 million capital improvement plan, eventually settling long-stalled teacher contract negotiations and often drawing criticism from the same teachers and others in the community for his top-down leadership style.
