Tonight’s RIH BOE meeting was a Special Meeting to discuss the Superintendent Search Process.
Public comments at the beginning of the meeting centered around Friday’s discovery of a swastika and slur in the boys bathroom at Ramapo High School, and the district’s (lacking) response. The incident caused shock, hurt and harm in our community, and there is a need for proper accountability as well as for education. It needs to be a teachable moment. It was noted that staff in the district were not even notified of the incident until a memo went out to the community today, almost a week later. We need to do better. The Interim Superintendent was not at the Board meeting.
The remainder of the meeting was dedicated to the Superintendent search process. Hazard Young Attea and Associates (HYA) presented their process and a menu of choices for the board to make.
The first choice the Board made was to NOT hold any community forums to gather input - so there will be NO meetings with teachers, staff, students, parents, community members. Five Board members (Ansh, Emmolo, Kiel, Mariani, Souders) decided that the only people worth a feedback interview were themselves, everyone else in the community will just ‘fill out a form’ in the format of an online survey (for an extra cost of $2K).
Kudos to Tom Bogdansky, Brian DeLaite, Helen Koulikourdis and Aaron Lorenz, who voted to hold community forums (in person and virtual) AND have an online survey, to get the most possible and engaged community feedback in the process.
Thumbs down to Kim Ansh, Marianna Emmolo, Melissa Kiel, Doreen Mariani and Audrey Souders, who voted for themselves to be the only ones with live input to the process. Everyone else just gets to fill out an online survey.
The remainder of the almost 3.5 hour meeting discussed details of the search including synchronizing calendar details, interview dates, salary comps, etc.
The proposed calendar aims to have a new Superintendent in place July 1, 2024.