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PITTSFIELD â The Pittsfield School Committee voted narrowly Wednesday to offer the superintendent position to Joe Curtis, prompting the public resignation of committee member Dennis Powell.
By a slim majority, four people on the elected seven-member committee voted to offer the Pittsfield Public Schoolsâ top job to Curtis, the interim superintendent, who officially has accepted, according to Chairwoman Katherine Yon. The committee now must negotiate a contract.
Mayor Linda Tyer, also a School Committee member, joined William Cameron, Daniel Elias and Yon in throwing their support behind the longtime Pittsfield Public Schools administrator and former Morningside Community School principal.
Tyer, who Yon appointed to serve on the 23-member search committee, said Curtis has âall of the personal and professional qualities and character traits needed for leadership.â
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The Pittsfield, Massachusetts school committee chose a new permanent superintendent Wednesday, prompting one member of the body – Berkshire County’s NAACP chapter president – to resign in protest.
Dennis Powell abruptly resigned from the committee just after a 4-3 vote to pick interim superintendent Joe Curtis for the job running the county’s largest school district at a virtual meeting.
“I just felt right from the very beginning, that the whole process was rigged, said Powell. “From the selection of the consultant, from the way the search committee was formed, to Joe Curtis stating that he was not going to run for the position and requiring that the school committee give him a contract that promised he would be able to go back as the deputy when a superintendent was selected. And we had no prior knowledge that he had changed his mind and was going to go for the position until we received the applications from the consultant.”
In its first meeting since October 2019, the curriculum subcommittee on Wednesday unanimously approved a new course for high school Seniors and Juniors titled Aspiring Educator Foundations. Remembering when I was young and being an aspiring educator I had no clear picture of what that meant in high school, interim Superintendent Joseph Curtis said. So to be able to experience what an educator does and the responsibilities and such in high school I think is phenomenal for our students to have the opportunity to do so. Created by Pittsfield High School s English Language Arts teacher Kristen Negrini, the course aims to help inspire new educators to join the field while giving them early skills in developing their own philosophy on education.
The United Educators of Pittsfield has filed an Open Meeting Law complaint with the School Committee and the city clerk in relation to the Jan. 27 vote. Their complaint states the committee used an executive session during its regular meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 27, to deliberate the return of students. The committee and the UEP agreed to a memorandum of understanding detailing when and how instruction would occur during the pandemic at the start of the school year. This deliberate effort to deny parents the information they need to make informed decisions about the health and welfare of their children is a clear violation of the state s Open Meeting Law, said Melissa Campbell, the president of the UEP.