Letter: ARMS Educators Object To Hiring Process For New Principal
Amherst Regional Middle School. Photo: Toni Cunningham
The following letter was sent to the Amherst School Committee on March 27, 2023.
On March 21, 2023 two finalists for the Amherst Regional Middle School (ARMS) principal position were brought forward via email to our school community.
We have a strong internal candidate with commensurate, and, in some cases, substantially more credentials and licenses who is not in the finalist pool.
After several years of administrative turnover, this internal candidate with wide staff support will be an important person to add to the pool of principal finalists for ARMS.
Please add the internal candidate as a finalist and include them in the community forum scheduled for Tuesday, March 28 at 5pm.
Robin Clifford
Ashley Dunn
Jennifer Jensen
Patrick Hunter
Irene LaRoche
Emily Morin
Jen Oliver
Heather Sullivan-Flynn
Frank Vaissière
Claire Cocco
The signatories are educators at the Amherst Regional Middle School. An additional 12 ARMS Educators indicated their support for this letter but asked that their names not be published.
ARMS principalship has, sadly enough, a bad reputation. I was on the hiring committee for the current principal and felt he was approaching the position with humanitarian values. I don’t know what happened to cause his early resignation, or for that matter, why the position has become a revolving door. But I do know the building needs MORE support in practicing restorative, measures. I do know from my own family’s experiences in being “educated” within this building, that there were many, many, issues, I was forced to face, as a single mother. Issues that one should never have to be forced to tangle with alone, like the incredibly, confounded, sixteen syllabled, language, in IEPs, to arranging meeting after meeting to speak with adults simply to ask them, “Now, what was it that my child did that caused you to issue him yet another suspension?” And, “What was it exactly that occurred that drove you to send our child out of your class for the fifteenth time this semester?” I never did receive any answers that would help to resolve my children’s dilemma. It is these matters, that go back generations, that inspire me to write. This building houses children from four, different, towns. Amherst having the greatest and perhaps richest, population. Leverett, Shutesbury, and Pelham, I have learned throughout the years, have incredibly wealthy incomes, far different than those in our neighborhood. If class issues could be incorporated, into more adult trainings, and race issues, that are more than February’s curriculum, and into the daily curricula, we would have a better informed and skilled, group of people, all around. The fact that administration is funneling these “interviews” to arrive at a candidate that suits more their desired outcome, which I suspect is someone who will not rock their boat, is nothing new. I support the letter and its authors. But, I must say, for this to become a situation where they trace back their steps and face they are wrong, will probably, never, ever, happen. 🙁