A Few Questions for Dr. Xi,  Amherst’s New Superintendent of Schools

A Few Questions For…  is an occasional feature of the Indy, aimed at helping our readers get to know the people who make things happen in our town and our Valley. We feature members of town government and key town employees, along with civic leaders, activists, local educators, prominent volunteers, and residents who are not necessarily well-known. A Few Questions For…has been on hiatus for several months. This week, we relaunch the feature with a conversation with Amherst’s new school superintendent, E. Xiomara Herman.

Ericilda Xiomara Herman, known locally as Dr. Xi (pronouced zee), began work as the new Amherst School Superintendent on July 1, 2024.  Dr. Xi came to Amherst from the US Virgin Islands, where she served for 10 years as superintendent in a district with 5200 students and 15 principals. Prior to her administrative appointments, she worked as a teacher in both adult and elementary school education. She holds a doctorate in educational leadership from Walden University.

The Indy sat down with Dr. Xi on September 26 to talk about her vision for the Amherst system and to explore how things are going as she nears the completion of her first 100 days on the job.

Several themes emerged in our conversation, with a consistent message that her administration will put the interests and needs of students first within an agenda that values excellence, accessibility, transparency, accountability, and community. Her focus is on support: support for staff learning new systems, support for students navigating the social complexities of youth, and support for caregivers who want to know what is happening inside the schools.  She acknowledged the turmoil that roiled the district prior to her arrival and talked about rebuilding trust and a sense of community as essential to healing the trauma of recent years.

Speaking with Dr. Xi, one is reminded that the Amherst Schools are a complex system with myriad moving parts and we get the sense that she is still in the early stages of mapping out those moving parts, but also, that she is quickly developing a sense of where those parts mesh well and where they do not. Her approach to building a strong school system, she says, is data driven and team based. She is confident that a community vision for the Amherst schools will emerge from the joint work of families, educators, and central office personnel, and it is clear that her own aspirations for our schools are ambitious and that she sees possibilities for our schools that have yet to be explored locally. 

Dr Xi speaks in collaborative terms  – it never seems to be “I have done this” but rather, “my team and I are working on this.” She leaves you with the feeling that there are many people engaged in a coordinated effort to transform our schools – and that she is assembling teams around her whom she can trust and whose counsel she can take. She says she hopes this collective effort can facilitate greater  trust and collaboration between the schools and the community.

Among the many challenges facing the Amherst schools, the budget looms large, and Dr. Xi emphasized that it will be more productive if we start our conversations about fiscal challenges facing the schools, not with what we need to cut or what we cannot do because of fiscal constraints, but rather with what we need for our children and what we wish to see in the Amherst Schools, and then think creatively about how to fulfill those needs and aspirations. 

Since her arrival in Amherst, and despite an ambitious agenda, Dr. Xi has made time to meet with the local press (see e.g., here) and parent interest groups (see e.g., here) and has already received accolades for her accessibility. Throughout our conversation, Dr. Xi conveyed the sense that if one has a question, she wants you to get an answer and that there is no question about the schools that she and her teams are reticent to take on.

Dr. Xi emphasized that she was a teacher first and she remains a teacher in the way that she approaches her administrative work. This desire to clearly explain issues was at work in the initial phase of our interview, where she provided lengthy answers filled with examples. But as time ran short, we needed to switch to a kind of “lightning round” to get at least a brief take from her on some key issues facing our schools.

We were joined by Seth Keevaenthal, who started only a few weeks ago as the district’s new Media and Climate Specialist and who is responsible for, among other things, the district’s presence on social media.

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Indy: At the start of your first 100 days, you said, “I’m trying to get a fairly comprehensive picture, not only of where we are, but where we want to be.” So now we’re about 90 days in. What’s your sense of where we are and where we want to be?

Dr. Xi: Oh my gosh. Are we really at 90 days?

Indy: Pretty close. October 1 will be 92 days.  How does it look to you now?

Dr. XI: So I think when I came in, what I knew about the district was from what I read and researched and a little bit of the history. But as with anything, it’s kind of like a new car, right? You go into the dealership, you do your research ahead of time, you check the different brand specs and you have a feel for the fact that, okay, it’s a car, it’s an SUV, that’s what I wanted. And there’s four tires, Its got good traction. great reviews and there’s some things that I might have to worry about but if I service it right it’s gonna be on the road for a long time. And you jump into the car and and you start driving and then there’s some warranty issues and some things that you didn’t know about.

Once I got here, and was able to experience the district, it shifted my approach. Initially I had one-on-ones scheduled with everyone and there were a lot of things that I wanted to do and and then as I came in I halted my one-on-ones because I realized that there were some critical steps that I needed to address first. And then I was in meetings about open cases – OCR (Office of Civil Rights) cases, Title IX cases, and personnel issues and I needed to pause for a minute and delve deeper into what was happening. So I shifted my approach. And I decided that a more strategic, direct audit of each division would give me that sense of what was happening. 

Number one on everyone’s radar as I walked in were the budget and the fiscal issues. And so the first three divisions that did my version of an audit were human resources, because there were a lot of personnel issues.  Next our budget and finance division.  And then we had a mental health and behavioral services administrator who was sitting under student services, which mostly deals with our special education programs. But with her skills set and everything that was happening with trauma in the schools, with bullying, and the work that needed to be done for the school year to start, I needed to set up mental health and behavioral services as its own entity in this central office. So one of my first employee moves outside of hiring my executive assistant was making Maureen Fleming, the director of mental health and behavioral services and making it its own stand-alone division, because that’s the strength that was needed to address my priorities. 

Quickly, I started to track the things that we need to prioritize and I put them in three major buckets. I’m student centered–students first all the time. So student safety and wellbeing became priority number one. And then healing and stabilizing the district was very critical. But there’s so many aspects to that. And then for me–accountability. There was a sense that not a lot of communication was happening. There were questions being asked, but left unanswered.

So honestly and truly, where we’re at now is that every day I discover something new. And there are great things happening in this district and there are also things that we really have to work on. 

INDY: Quite a ways back, it was a very different school system.  Are we talking about a major overhaul of what we have right now – that we need to make some big changes? 

Dr. Xi: I wouldn’t say it’s an overhaul.  It may be a rebirth of practices–a rebirth of practices that may have fallen away or not been pushed the way they need to be. And again, it’s a question of accessibility and how user friendly it is.

Dr Xi noted that a data driven system requires that there be staff supports so that access to data is user friendly and that staff can readily access the data that they need.

Dr. Xi: Right now, if the schools want data, they come to IT to pull the data for them. But what we’re moving toward is that instead of a school leader who has to deal with 30 to 80 staff members having to go to five or six different sites to look at MCAS data, to look at attendance data, it’s now going to be a centralized hub, so my expectation of being a data driven leader comes with supports and that’s the one thing that I’ve learned throughout my tenure from being a teacher. Any change that you make whether it’s for a student or for an adult make sure you change it with supports. You train people how to use it, you support them through it, and then you let them go. 

Indy: If we jump ahead five years, ten years, do you have a big picture of what you believe the Amherst public schools should look like? Or are you currently so enmeshed in all these fine -grained things right now that it’s hard to come up with that big picture?

Xi: At the regional level–and I know it’s three separate districts–but at the same time I see one, because to me, it’s the K-12 lens, right? And what I think, and what I imagined and hope for, is that we can become the pre-K to 21 model nationwide (that is, pre-k through undergraduate study).  And every day and every opportunity that comes up, it’s in the back of my mind. I’m asking, for example, why hasn’t anyone taken advantage of the Five Colleges around the area? Why hasn’t anyone marketed the fact that we’re sitting right in the middle of that?  So sure, ranking is important to some people, because people Google things. I Google a lot. I’m like, hey, do I want to eat at this restaurant? What do the reviews say? But I also think that the experiences that we provide are what’s going to make us different. And I know that years ago, we may have been ranked quite high. But what are the programs now being used in those metrics?  And what will make us competitive? And I think about looking at, for example, the Chinese immersion Charter school that’s expanding in 2025. How do we compete when they expand and they get more spaces? Maybe we lose more students, but we actually offer Chinese courses. We offer multiple languages. We have a great performing arts section. We have the Innovation Career Pathways Program providing hands-on career preparation experiences, but who tells that story? 

So that’s why I knew we needed a media and climate person because we needed someone to start telling the story of the great things happening within the district.  Then I need us to cultivate and take advantage of the resources around us. There is agriculture right down the road. Why don’t we have a strong agricultural pipeline and system for our students? There is academia all around us so why aren’t we further connecting with that so students are graduating with some semblance of additional credits – not just dual enrollment, but imagine graduating with two years already under their belt and so they only spend two years in college. We’d be creating an early graduate pipeline.

So where do I see Amherst in five years? I see us being in the top research journals. I see us being models for other school districts that sit close to academia but don’t partner well enough with higher ed to create a full chain and pipeline. I see us creating pools that fill employment gaps and shifting and building employability skills. I see us being ranked near the top in Massachusetts.

So where do I see Amherst in five years? I see us being in the top research journals. I see us being models for other school districts that sit close to academia but don’t partner well enough with higher ed to create a full chain and pipeline. I see us creating pools that fill employment gaps and shifting and building employability skills. I see us being ranked near the top in Massachusetts. But it’s going to take work. It’s going to take innovation. It’s going to take open minds. It’s going to take perseverance. There will be a little bit of discomfort. And in the long run  we’ll  see the shift and change to where Amherst stands higher than it was before. 

Indy: Is there anything else you want to say about vision before we move on to some of the specific challenges? 

Dr. Xi: I think that for me, buy-in is the key.  As we work together as a community, with the staff, community, and everyone it can’t just be my vision, it has to be OUR vision, and it has to be one that’s rooted in support, rooted in clear communication. And again, I’m not even going to talk about the resources. I know that’s one of the challenges you’ll be asking me about, but it just has to be rooted in the best interests of the children. 

Indy: So how we get that buy -in? 

Xi: Clear communication! We agree to disagree. and we know that everyone’s input counts. But your way or my way isn’t the only way, so we have to be a strong community.

Indy: Let’s quickly run through a few of the challenges facing the Amherst Schools.  Let’s start with the budget. And I have to say, I’ve lived here for more than 40 years I don’t remember ever starting a budget year with such a grim outlook and with such harsh demands for cuts to the schools.  What are you thinking about this situation? 

Dr. Xi: I think everyone wants to support the school system and I think the fiscal challenge we face is not only an Amherst issue because across the nation we see districts facing similar challenges. I think it impacts us harder because we’re a small community and when we see cuts it’s impacting our neighbor, it’s our friend, it’s our cousin and I understand that because coming from a small island, it’s very similar to a small town so it hits much closer to home when we have to cut. 

When I presented the budget to the school committee I wanted to present the numbers because I wanted to be very clear on what was told to us: we are starting without the 2% in the base budget for all four towns that we were allocated last year, and we’re only going up 2.5% and this translates to a $2 .6 million deficit. (editor’s note: last year, the Town Council agreed to give the regional schools an additional, one-time budget increase of 2 percent, raising them up to six percent instead of the recommend four percent but with a warning that they should not come back and ask for that 2% increase to be permanently added to the base budget).

…if we don’t do something different, if we don’t start to generate our own revenues, if we don’t start to push and create different opportunities for our children, to bring children that are out of district back into the district, and even bring children who haven’t even thought about coming to Amherst  to Amherst, we are going to continually be in a deficit. So now is the time to start thinking about creative programming. But the budget has to be driven by the vision of what we can be and what we want to be.

My role now as a superintendent, is to be creative and be an open thinker, and that’s what I’m going to do on Saturday at the four towns meeting.  What does what we are being offered look like and what could it look like? That’s where the community is going to have to rally. The four towns will have to rally to understand that in the end of it all, if we don’t do something different, if we don’t start to generate our own revenues, if we don’t start to push and create different opportunities for our children, to bring children that are out of district back into the district, and even bring children who haven’t even thought about coming to Amherst  to Amherst, we are going to continually be in a deficit. So now is the time to start thinking about creative programming. But the budget has to be driven by the vision of what we can be and what we want to be.

Indy: School Committee member Jennifer Shao  said something like this in the midst of the budget crisis last year when she was trying to convince the town council to cough up the extra $350,000 and she said, why do we start with cuts? Why don’t we start with what we need and then go out and find the money? And it was a really compelling argument. And then the town council and finance committee came back this year with we’re going to start with a million and a half dollar cut. No discussion of where we are, where we need to be, and where we might look for the money – just a mandate for austerity.  Can we shift that conversation so that the priority is to talk about what we need, and then have people thinking about where we find the money?

Dr. Xi: That’s my intent and that was the intent at the last school committee meeting. Letting everyone know that we’re running the base of what children need to graduate. Can we talk about where we want to be? And can we at least agree to offer the basics? And can we possibly do that with a $2 .6 million cut?

Indy: The last set of contract negotiations with the Amherst Pelham Education Association–the faculty and staff union–was the most openly acrimonious between the district and the educators, as any I can remember, in over 40 years in the area. Do you have any thoughts on the legacy you’ve inherited and maybe a game plan for the future?

XI: First, I didn’t inherit a legacy because I’ve got my own. I actually started out as a union member. I did representative training in the union, and I’ve worked very hard at it.  I’ve already started labor relations meetings with all of the unions here. I believe in a positive labor management relationship, and so we going to collaborate. 

Indy: I know that you carry a copy of the union contract on your phone. 

Dr. Xi: I do. So, we’ve had really good meetings so far. On some things we agree, on some we disagree. But we will definitely respect each other and work together.

Indy: Care to comment on your relationship with the school committee? That was not so great with the interim superintendent. 

Dr. Xi: I’m my own person. I’ve met with each member of the school committee, either singly or in groups. Open communication and  transparency are the key. They know their role. I know mine. I am here to serve and to execute on their behalf to make sure that there’s a good educational system. We communicate. I work with the chairs very closely and I make sure that they get the information they need. 

Indy:  At your very first interview with the local press you said “I’m a superintendent for all the kids.” Are there any plans to restore any of the non-traditional curriculum. I imagine this is going to come out of the curricular audit. But we had all these cuts in nontraditional curriculum. We got rid of most of the vocational courses at the high school, early childhood education, the shops, stuff like that. Is there any plan to restore some of that stuff for the non-college bound? And what about restoring foreign language in the Middle School?

Dr. Xi:  Yes. I’m going to start our curricular audit in about a week or two, And a facilities audit. And then we will revisit foreign language at the middle school. The reason why I paired facilities and curriculum together is to explore spacing opportunities. We’ve had years of deferred maintenance. We have parts of the high school that are shut down, and that haven’t been used in years, and we need to reopen them. We also need to look at space in the middle school. And then we need to look at what our program offerings are and how are we truly competitive around the area because we’re losing students.

Indy. How about restorative justice? The stats on retention, when you move from a discipline model to a justice model are pretty impressive, particularly for retention of kids of color. And now that program is gone. Is there any chance that  it will come back in the future? 

Dr. Xi:  First, it’s all about implementation of practice. Restorative justice is not a title, it’s a practice and so it’s making sure that our counselors and deans are well trained, parents are in alignment, and actually give permission, because restorative circles should have parental permission for minors. So it’s all about how we implement the practice of restorative justice. 

Indy: You think it’ll be implemented? 

Dr. Xi: Yes, I think once it’s well received, once we’re well trained and we have a procedure and policy in place around how things should be done, and parents are in alignment and okay with it, then we can bring it forward.

Indy: Rebuilding the trust? 

Dr. Xi: That’s a big one. Yeah. We’ve started. It’s not just making statements. I’ve been open to various conversations. The first thing to do to rebuild trust is you have to be honest. You have to have integrity. You have to say, yes, I did something wrong. Apologize.  And yes, I’m going to work to make it better. But I am the new superintendent. So I have the opportunity to make my own mistakes, and to be held accountable. And so we push for accountability, respect, professionalism, and being student-centered as our core values for ARPS.

Indy: Are we going to come back and revisit the Title IX report? The district promised that there would be  a full airing of what happened – a discussion, and an accounting.  And then there wasn’t. They just kind of pushed it under the table and stopped talking about it.  And there was a lot of stuff in that report that was really distressing. And so, you know, part of the healing comes from acknowledging that that stuff happened. 

Dr. XI: Oh, I strongly acknowledge that those things happened. It’s actually one of the driving forces for why I started to work the way I started it. Initially I was like, I’m going to meet with everybody one-on-one, and that was the standard way. And then I had to pause and restructure and re-look. And that’s why we prioritized updating our bullying intervention plan. But in terms of opening up the wounds and how we address the Title IX report, I haven’t thought much about that because I actually thought that was done before I came in, because there appears to be a semblance of closure. So what we’ve been doing is we’ve been talking to parents who have  specifically come to me, like some of those parents who were a part of the Title IX investigation. My team and I have been meeting parents individually. We’ve had parents who have had not just concerns about the Title IX report, but concerns about antisemitism and we’re just trying to hear where we are and what things are happening. And so for me, it’s taking all of that into a place of how do we really craft and heal this district? 

Indy: What can parents and the community do to become more involved in supporting our schools?

Dr. Xi:  We can’t do this alone. I think of a school system like a three-legged stool. There’s the school itself. There’s parents and community, and then there’s us, the central office  And the children sit on top of that stool and we’re all supporting them. For me, parents have an important role to play. Parents are welcome in our school buildings  We only have children for about 180 days for about six hours a day.. Parents, I think after COVID, we lost that direct engagement. And then when we came back, and there was a lot of social distancing. But one of my goals is that every caregiver counts. And I use the word caregiver because in Massachusetts, we have caregivers. So that’s parents, that’s guardians, that’s aunts, uncles, grandparents, that’s cousins, that’s a close neighbor. And every caregiver counts. And we’re rekindling that engagement, bringing everyone together, sharing strategies. And it’s kind of strengthening that family bond so that everyone knows that they’re supported. So we’re not only here to educate students, but we’re here to support caregivers as well. 

Indy: I heard you have a podcast. 

Dr. XI:  It’s coming soon. We are trying to find a time in the schedule that we can have the guests and work out some of the logistics.  But it will be every other week in tandem with the Family Forum Newsletter that goes out to families every other week. So one week we’ll have the family forum and the next week there will be a podcast and video.

The ARPS Family Forum is a bi-weekly newsletter that goes out to families from the Superintendent’s Office. Every Forum includes a description of what is in the issue, a message from the superintendent, a student academic and athletic spotlight, the most recent Staff Spotlight, district updates, a listing of upcoming events, and “contact us” information.

Right now the family forum is mainly for caregivers to create an opportunity for an open dialogue between the superintendent’s office but in the future a link to the forum may appear on the district web site.

Indy: Do you have an update on the sixth grade move?

Dr. Xi: Yes. Two weeks ago, I expressed to the Amherst School Committee the fact that in my onboarding, there were not a lot of details handed over about the sixth grade move, so I wasn’t fully aware of all that was happening with that, where the funding was coming from, and all those things. Since then, I have I have met with Town Manager Paul Bockelman to see if we could get the ARPA funds that the district had previously said they didn’t need to move the sixth graders. I’m also in conversation with our DESI (Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) regional representatives because they have concerns about how this impacts our  regional system if the other schools in the region will not be moving their dsixth graders.. My primary concern in the sixth grade move is trying to see if we can get it done sooner because Fort River will not have space in the upcoming school year for the sixth grade. So we’re hashing it out. And our goal is that If it’s possible, we’ll try and get the sixth grade moved in the fall. And if not, we’re definitely going to be on track for fall of 2026.

Indy: Do you have a sense of when you’ll be able to figure that out?

Dr. Xi:   I think that everything needs to be finalized by November.  So that gives us about 30 to 60 days to finalize. There seems to be some groundwork that was laid out. So we just need to see if that groundwork is still feasible – what would need to be done facilities wise, walk it through and just be able to say, hey, we’re going to plan for this coming school year, at least by November, so that parents can start planning and the community can raise their questions, and  we can do a series of community meetings and things like that.

Indy: Well, I wish we had more time. I think the public really appreciates knowing what’s going on inside the central office and in the school buildings. Thank you again for taking the time to talk with us.