NORTHAMPTON — In an effort to select Northampton Public Schools’ next superintendent on Thursday, School Committee members asked candidates Annie Azarloza and Bethany Silver — two of three finalists in the running for the job — 19 questions on Tuesday evening about how they, if chosen for the position, would lead the school district.
The interviews, which occurred over the course of more than three hours in the JFK Middle School, marked the final two before Thursday’s deliberations. These interviews followed that of the first candidate, Thomas Danehy, who interviewed on Monday.
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 candidates, questions centered around commonly discussed issues at NPS, such as how the next superintendent would secure funding for and manage special education classes, his or her opinion on state legislation calling for implementation of a bell-to-bell cellphone ban for students and candidates’ experience with drafting and negotiating for budgets.
Annie Azarloza
Azarloza responded to the committee’s questions about her experience drafting school budgets. She pointed out that she uses a tiered approach, in which budgeted items are organized by their importance before being brought to other school officials for collaboration.
“We’re going to first start with [asking], ‘what are the line items that potentially when we think about staff development, can we move out of the general budget and put them in Title II funds? When we talk about social, emotional curriculum, can we take that money in general education, in the general ledger, and put them in the title for well-grounded education?” Azarloza said. “We look at a variety of ways to be creative in reducing those line items so we’re not touching the people who have direct contact with the children.”
When the committee asked Azarloza how she would work to strengthen the district’s Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), a framework used by schools to provide academic, behavioral and social-emotional support to students, she explained that she would have to work with teachers and principals directly to determine best practices for tier one, or highest-needs students.
Azarloza said that how the district’s MTSS operates in practice is crucial to whether its successful. Ideally, she would like to walk through classrooms with principals to see how the instructions play out.
“I want to know, how are we operationalizing that MTSS — what does tier one instruction look like in the classroom? Are we using multimodal learning? We have different learning styles. Do we have integrated supports for multilingual learners and students with disabilities?” she said. “Once I learn that, I’d like to know what that teaching and learning looks like in the classrooms. I would like to conduct instructional walkthroughs and … look at what does instruction look like? What does student engagement look like?”
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, Azarloza said the topic was “near and dear” to her, as she, an English language learner who struggled with a speech impediment, was placed in special education classes as a student.
Azarloza noted that rather than using special education as an intervention for struggling students, special education resources are best used when implemented earlier in a student’s academic career.
“In my opinion, we’re using special education as an intervention; that’s what’s happening. I want to see what MTSS looks like. Is it just living in a beautiful binder, or is it living in practice? My feeling is that … we’re seeing, which is very atypical, students identified later in schooling,” she said. ” Typically, it’s the other way around — you’re identified early, you close the gaps when they’re early, when they’re young, and then as they get older, you’re building their skills and disposition. So by the time they get to high school, you’re really weaning them off of that.”
When asked about artificial intelligence, student screen time and restrictions on cellphone use in schools, Azarloza argued that AI is now part of society’s culture and must be embraced in an educational and responsible way. She compared students using AI currently to calculator use years ago to argue that if used correctly, both can enhance education.
Discussing Northampton’s potential implementation of bell-to-bell phone ban in accordance with pending state legislation, Azarloza said the ban, or cellphone policy, should be organized with input from teachers as well as students, to ensure it is enforceable.
“You’ve got to be able to articulate the why we are doing this — the why is very important,” Azarloza said. “[We need to explain to students] that this is a state mandate. This is something that we’ve got to implement, and we have to make sure we adhere to. We’ve got to be in compliance … you’ll always have the outliers that are going to push those boundaries, and that’s normal, but it’s also important that we’re consistent on what we say we’re going to do. If we say, ‘OK, if your cellphone is out, this is what’s going to happen,’ it’s important that we stick to it.”
Bethany Silver
In response to the committee’s questions about her ability to draft an education budget, Silver, who has served as assistant superintendent of the Bloomfield Public Schools in Connecticut since 2011, discussed her ability to bring Bloomfield’s budget to a more than 3% increase after the mayor requested a level-funded budget.
“Our mayor said that she wanted a 0% increase, and our chief financial officer said that we needed an 8% increase. It was a tough moment, so I met with our principals, met with our central office staff, spent a lot of time with our chief financial officer,” Silver said. “We identified some savings and then taking that 6% to 0%, we created the scenarios stepping from six to five to four to three to one and zero, and balancing the cost of those reductions with the impact on our learners. Certainly, one of the core priorities of that process was to preserve classroom teachers and to preserve student-facing folks.”
When asked about implementation of a MTSS, Silver noted that 24% of Northampton students qualify for special needs, with special needs interventions occurring for older students at the middle and high school levels.
Silver said that a classroom walkthrough to address special needs in students earlier on could help the district identify potential shortcomings with its special education system.
“Let’s review what the criteria are, and then let’s have a team visit our schools and do a walkthrough to see where it’s strong and where it’s not, and then to probably differentiate supports to each school based on where they fall in the observation of the implementation,” Silver said. “I always felt that assessment can teach us so much about our learners, and I’ve worked with district leaders to build routines where we analyze student performance using data teams and also using accountability teams.”
Discussing ways to close the gaps in special needs education, Silver explained that improvements to instructional leadership, in the first tier, should be implemented to bring stronger supports to monitoring how IEPs, or Individualized Education Programs are carried out.
Silver also noted that analytic tools to track and monitor the success of students’ IEPs should be used to close gaps in special education.
“Having a dashboard that’s public facing and that speaks to this data would be very helpful,” Silver said. “We need to look at how we are collecting that information about the delivery of services and compiling it and then communicating it back to the community. That level of accountability and transparency should help the service providers also understand how where the gaps are and where they are not meeting IEP requirements.”
When asked about artificial intelligence, student screen time and restrictions on cellphone use in schools, Silver discussed her son’s reaction when he, in the eighth grade, was informed of a cellphone ban at his school. She added, however, that students saw improved sociability and focus in districts that have implemented phone bans.
Silver said that should legislation requiring a bell-to-bell ban go into effect, the district will have to find a way to comply with state law in a way that is enforceable and protects from potential theft of phones.
“When the students put their cellphones in Yondr pouches and not with them and in front of their faces all day, what happens is that they end up talking to one another — that’s a beautiful thing, because when we look at our young people today there’s a lot of anxiety and part of that anxiety comes from a lot of isolation … cellphones isolate them further in some ways,” she said. “What’s important is that the district is in compliance and that the schools have a manageable process to ensure the safety and protection of any device that comes into the school — that it won’t get damaged or stolen.”
