Vote Medford 2007

Full Text: (Q12) Three Changes To Improve District's Hiring Practices

Teacher retirements will peak across the state in the next several years and many districts will be competing for high-quality candidates. Given this scenario, and the importance of creating a faculty and administration that reflect the diversity of the student body, Medford's hiring practices will be critical. Do you believe the current hiring process in Medford is effective, and if not, what are 3 specific changes you would make to improve the district's hiring practices?

Attenazio: (Q12) Three Changes To Improve District's Hiring Practices

• Strong diversity push, posting in nontraditional media publications and minority outlets. Look out of state and offer relocation incentives.
• Evaluate teacher compensation package to see if it is competitive to other towns in attracting new hires and high quality staff.
• Develop school based hiring teams to help principal with screening and interviews.

Brady: (Q12) Three Changes To Improve District's Hiring Practices

Medford has hired many qualified educators to serve the needs of our students. Medford offers many wonderful advantages to teacher applicants including a support system for them. Medford has a competitive pay scale and quality fringe benefits. We need to attract more educators representing diversity to serve as role model for our growing diverse population. I believe that our hiring process has worked well and that many have participated in that process in most instances before it gets to the Superintendent. We value input but must rely on our hired professionals to make the best choices.

Cugno: (Q12) Three Changes To Improve District's Hiring Practices

I believe that Medford’s hiring process is on the right track. The changes that have been made in the last few years are for the better. Certain things I would continue to reinforce and not necessarily change would be to continue the forming of sub-committees set up for positions such as the department heads. Hosting more job fairs to attract a wider range of diversified as well as qualified candidates similar to the one we hosted. To establish a better mentoring program for teachers in our system that could be trained properly to take certain positions as they open.

D'aveta: (Q12) Three Changes To Improve District's Hiring Practices

Teachers entering the school system here and elsewhere are often arriving from backgrounds in other fields having made a mid-career decision to teach. Medford will need to keep pace with market rate salaries to attract these professionals as well as those teachers seeking their first job after university. In all cases, Medford should employ best hiring practices to ensure the highest level of commitment to these new teachers as well as those currently on staff. As classrooms become more complex and parents and administrators make more and more demands on a teacher's time, adequate classroom assistance should be included to help all new staff and, in a perfect world, should be spread out among the school so that the whole faculty may take advantage of another adult presence in the classroom. Teaching is an art and a skill; teachers need the school administration to support them in a positive way from the outset.

DiGiantommaso: (Q12) Three Changes To Improve District's Hiring Practices

Our new schools attract highly qualified teachers and administrators, and also we offer competitive pay scales. A major attraction is our Employee Day Care Center, that is self sustaining and operated by teachers.

Kulik: (Q12) Three Changes To Improve District's Hiring Practices

The current hiring practices are not sufficient. Here are three areas where I would encourage a change of practice.

We should begin earlier recruitment of candidate teachers via "anticipated openings" advertising as is done by other school districts. This should be coupled with more aggressive "job fair" type activities at regional teacher colleges.

We should have less central involvement in the actual selection of candidates. (Education reform officially puts hiring as a responsibility of the building principal. In practice the superintendent, assistant superintendents, and subject area directors are heavily involved.) These decisions should be pushed down to the principals.

We should create a standing advisory board of parents teachers and administrators to review and interview all candidates, in a way which is similar to what we did for recent principal and special education pupil services director.

O'Keefe: (Q12) Three Changes To Improve District's Hiring Practices

One of the primary goals in my role as a School Committee member is Accountability. To improve the district's hiring practices, the school committee must (1) consider this an element of performance that is contractually reviewed annually by the school committee with central administration. It must be (2) measured with the Superintendent and cascaded down to the principals for their merit raises and rated financially. The retention of qualified teachers for a period of time based upon criteria and metrics must be weighed accordingly. (3) Strong policies around minimum criteria and qualification should be mandated and directed by the school committee as a guideline for this process. As a school committee member, I would stress this because based upon a very recent Department of Education (DOE) report, when the School Committee was asked if they reviewed the Superintendents' performance annually as stipulated in his contract as a basis for setting compensation and improving the future job performance, the DOE gave the current School Committee a rating of POOR. The provision in the Superintendents' contract read The Committee shall evaluate annually the performance of the Superintendent in writing in accordance with a mutually agreed upon evaluation instrument which clearly articulates the goals, objectives, and standards by which the Superintendent's performance will be measured... A review of the evaluations of the Superintendent which were prepared by each school committee member indicated no two evaluations had the same appraisal period. The DOE report concluded that the school committee has only reviewed the Superintendent twice in a four year period which is clearly a breach of their fiduciary obligation to the taxpayers, parents, and student of this community. We must do better today for tomorrow.

Pompeo: (Q12) Three Changes To Improve District's Hiring Practices

While Medford has had difficulty in recruiting diverse faculty, I believe that its hiring process is effective. The Affirmative Action Job Fair should be an annual event. Outreach efforts to hire more faculty that is representative of our student population should be stepped up.

Skerry: (Q12) Three Changes To Improve District's Hiring Practices

Medford has attracted and retained many highly qualified professionals. When interviewing prospective faculty Medford offers many advantages such as:

• Competitive pay scale
• Quality benefits
• Accessible location near Boston
• District Based Licensure program
• Mentoring program
• New schools K-8
• Diverse student population

Medford has made significant affirmative action hires in recent years including Principals and a Language Arts Director. Medford held an Affirmative Action Job Fair as well. However we still need to identify and hire more faculty that is representative of our student population.

We will need to do more outreach. However, recruiting faculty from out of state has not worked well since many leave and return home after a short period.