NORTHFIELD — Residents of all four Pioneer Valley Regional School District towns will get the chance to meet the three candidates for the district’s permanent superintendent position on Tuesday afternoon.
Beginning at 3:30 p.m. in the kiva at Pioneer Valley Regional School, the public can meet current Interim Superintendent Patricia Kinsella, Palmer Public Schools Superintendent Patricia Gardner and Athol-Royalston Regional School District Director of Intervention and Acceleration Cynthia Kennedy in 20-minute intervals as the School Committee mulls its choice for superintendent.
School Committee Chair Julie Burke said Tuesday will be a chance for the community to meet each of the candidates and ask some questions.
“Candidates will be given a chance to say a little something about themselves,” she said. “And really, we want to devote the rest of the time for questions and answers.”
Kinsella will kick off the public forums from 3:30 to 3:50 p.m. and Gardner will follow from 4:00 to 4:20. Kennedy will close out the forums from 4:30 to 4:50.
Following the public forums, the Pioneer School Committee will roll right into candidate interviews in the school library at 5 p.m., with Kinsella starting off and running until 5:45. Gardner’s interview will begin at 6 and run until 6:45 and Kennedy’s interview will go from 7 to 7:45. Each interview will be followed by a 15-minute brief discussion by the committee.
Once all three candidates are interviewed, there will be a public comment period from 8 to 8:30 p.m. Residents are allowed to speak for a maximum of three minutes.
“We hope that the people that attended (the public forums) will stay and attend the interviews,” Burke said, “and they can let the full committee know if they are leaning strongly toward one candidate or another.”
Following the public comment period, the School Committee will deliberate on their choice of superintendent in open session.
Burke said she is looking forward to hearing from each of the candidates and thanked everyone involved in the search process.
“I would like to thank the search committee, the teachers, the parents, members of the community and local town administrations,” Burke said, “because they put in a lot of work.”
Kinsella, Pioneer’s interim superintendent, joined the district in August 2021 and has held several other senior administration positions in other school districts. Kinsella was the assistant superintendent in Lincoln and Canton public schools from 2014 to 2017 and 2017 to 2019, respectively. She was also the interim senior district administrator at the Newmark School District in New Hampshire from 2019 to 2020.
Gardner, the superintendent of Palmer Public Schools since 2016, has experience at Turners Falls from 2011 to 2013 and Southbridge Public Schools from 2013 to 2015. Before joining Palmer, Gardner was the interim director of academics and student services of North Brookfield Public Schools from July through December 2015.
Kennedy, Athol-Royalston’s director of intervention and acceleration since 2021, has held several jobs at different levels of education. She was the principal of Westfield Public Schools from 2012 to 2018, the lead dissertation advisor at the University of New England from 2019 to 2021, and is also currently the Royalston Community School principal and director of Title I.
Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com or 413-930-4081.