NORTHAMPTON — In an effort to select Northampton Public Schools’ next superintendent on Thursday, School Committee members asked candidate Thomas Danehy — one of three finalists in the running for the job — 19 questions on Monday evening about how he, if chosen for the position, would lead the school district.
Danehy currently serves as executive director of the nonprofit Area Cooperative Education Services (ACES) in New Haven, Connecticut, a role that he has filled for about 12 of the roughly 40 years he’s worked in education.
“I was envisioning myself as retiring on July 1 from my job at ACES in New Haven, and I realized over the last several months that I was in no way ready to do that. I’ve been looking for other positions outside of Connecticut [instead],” Danehy said after being asked why he’s interested in Northampton. “I can offer and provide some leadership to make sure that we’re all working on the same page with the same thoughts of improvement out there and make improvements. … I feel like I still have things to contribute to the world of education, and I’d be happy to do it here in Northampton.”
Two other finalists, Annie Azarloza and Bethany Silver, were scheduled to be interviewed separately on Tuesday night at 6:30. A fourth candidate, Ivelise Velasquez, dropped out of the race leading up to Monday’s interviews. The finalists are seeking to replace Portia Bonner, who will leave the district at the end of the fiscal year on June 30.
As School Committee members interviewed Danehy, questions centered around commonly discussed issues at NPS, such as how he would secure funding for and manage special education classes, his opinion on state legislation calling for implementation of a bell-to-bell cellphone ban for students and his experience with drafting and negotiating for budgets.
When asked if he had ever created a district budget and how he would work to ensure the budgeting process is transparent and fair, Danehy explained that he has planned 15 budgets in his time working in education. He added that transparency, honesty and compromise were key elements of budgeting.
“The core values that I kind of kept in the back of our minds as we went through the budget, were ‘What’s the mission and what’s the vision, what are the outcomes for all kids that we’re looking for,” he said. “It was really about student-facing services. What was that going to look like? What are the priorities … what are the services that kids need? We looked at equity commitments; we looked at legal obligations.”
Danehy continued to discuss budgeting when he was asked to categorize the funding challenges faced by NPS. He said that while Northampton’s budgeting challenges are not unique from those he has seen in other districts, he believes that the budgeting process in Northampton should start earlier in the season so that the district can more easily fill budgeted staffing positions.
In response to a question about how he would strengthen the district’s Multi-Tiered System of Supports, a framework used by schools to provide academic, behavioral and social-emotional support to students, Danehy explained that social, emotional intervention and support, especially early-on, can yield better academic results for students who are struggling.
Danehy added that direct administrative intervention and guidance is also a best practice in implementing social and emotional support services.
“If you leverage the opportunity to create a strong tier one, especially for social emotional learning, it frees up other people in the building to do their work around instruction,” he said. “I always found that with behavior issues in schools, especially when it was evaluating staff, I always had my door open and whenever I was in a classroom, nobody came to my door because I wasn’t in there, I was in a classroom working with the teacher and helping them with different instructional techniques. You get more bang for your buck this way.”
Responding to the committee’s question on how the district can better fill gaps in special education and ensure that all students who need support have access to it, Danehy explained that while school districts face legal obligations to provide adequate, and sometimes costly, special education, training teachers and paraprofessionals on how to best address special needs can lead to a general decrease in the need for special education later on in a student’s career.
“Part of it is around professional learning opportunities for the educators out there — ways for parallel instruction to happen with the special ed teacher and the regular ed teacher in the same classroom and providing professional learning for all the para[professionals] out there,” Danehy said. “If you can support kids in the lower grades, especially up to grade three, especially in reading, I think the benefits, the return on investment for that work, can be tremendous in avoiding long-term costs with special education.”
Danehy was also asked about artificial intelligence, student screen time and restrictions on cellphone use in schools, to which he responded that he believed a balance should be found between the use of technology as an educational aid and restrictions on distracting or harmful uses.
Noting that he wished the state government would allow districts more time to work on their own cellphone policies before advocating for banning student phone use in schools, he added that teachers could use cellphones as tools for learning.
“There needs to be a balanced, intentional approach to that, especially around AI, in teaching students, if they don’t know already, how it works, but also letting them not forget they’re the ones who are asking AI the questions, and they’re in the driver’s seat … it can foster good critical thinking exercises for students and planning for teachers,” he said. “In Connecticut, the legislators are hot to ban cellphones. We have a system in place where the kids put their phone in a pocket when they enter the classroom, and it works. Discipline cases have decreased and bullying complaints have decreased. It’s been a pretty marvelous step.”
