PARIS — The single most important decision a school board has to make is selecting a superintendent to lead a school district.

As recent events have shown, when a board gets it wrong the school district and its communities suffer.

In Oxford Hills, hiring a superintendent has only been done twice over a generation — when former Superintendent Mark Eastman was appointed back in 1995 and his successor and well-known entity, former Superintendent Rick Colpitts, stepped into the role 15 years later.

Both men were honored by their community and their peers for their leadership, Eastman in 2008 by the American Association of School Administrators and Colpitts in 2015 by the Maine School Management Association.

Their times as school district leaders overlapped during the recession from 2007 to 2009, considered the worst economic period since the Great Depression 80 years earlier. In Oxford Hills, school budgets had to be slashed and staff eliminated while residents saw their property taxes ratcheted up to cover gaps in state funding. Recovery from that recession only recently has come close to being realized.

Seventeen months ago, after Colpitts announced his retirement, Maine School Administrative District 17’s board of directors was tasked with recruiting his replacement.

That replacement, Monica Henson, began what turned out to be a short and turbulent tenure that left the Oxford Hills community asking about how such a polarizing figure could have been installed as its superintendent.

While Henson’s experience was extensive and her references stellar, as details and consequences of her leadership style became apparent, so too did stories from her previous positions that might have raised serious questions had they been asked and answered.

Many people have expressed belief, especially through social media, that the hiring process for Henson failed. They wanted to know how publicly available information about her leadership, on Facebook and in news outlets, could have been missed by those in charge of hiring the new superintendent.

The Advertiser Democrat spoke with Diana Olsen, current SAD 17 board director and board chair at the time Colpitts stepped down, last week.

“The process that we used to select our new superintendent had to be extremely thorough, thoroughly developed, and carefully followed,” said Olsen. “When we got word that he would retire, the board immediately established an ad hoc committee” to start the search, she explained.

Three more committees would form to conduct the superintendent search. Each volunteer had to undergo training through the Maine School Management Association on the process in order to participate. And each was required to maintain confidentiality throughout.

The ad hoc committee was made up of eight school board members, each one representing one town in the school district. The committee reached out to MSMA for guidance and made the project a national search. The recruitment plan called for a new superintendent to be on board by July 1, 2021.

Olsen, who represents Otisfield on the SAD 17 board, explained that MSMA has a well-regarded search consulting team that works with schools and districts, not just in Maine, but throughout New England.

“MSMA has an extremely thorough understanding of public school organizations in Maine so we felt we were on the right track working with them,” she said. “Once we contracted with them several things happened at the same time.

“We posted the position on March 12, both in-state and nationwide. MSMA posted it in journals, online to other sites and through their networks.”

By then the ad hoc committee had developed a survey that was sent out to the Oxford Hills community: to parents, community members, administrators, teachers and staff. It was also posted on the school district’s website.

“A little over 400 people participated in the survey,” Olsen said. “About 55% were parents, 23% identified as SAD 17 teachers, 12.5% were support staff. About 11% identified as students. School board members made up 1.2% of responses, 1.5% were from the community and 3% were district administrators.”

A number of common themes emerged from the results, which were analyzed by group segment.

Students, teachers and support staff ranked strong leadership as the most important qualification in an eventual superintendent, with student achievement immediately following. Students were also highly concerned with equity issues.

Administrators responded that a strong spokesperson was the primary qualification they were looking for, followed by strong leadership and student achievement. All three employee groups ranked developing and mentoring staff and articulating the district’s vision high on their lists.

Among parents, board members and the community, strong leadership and articulating vision were important.

A couple of outliers were notable. Students and board members both rated managing the budget in their top five qualifications, while the other groups did not. And while student achievement was ranked in the top three choices for almost everyone, it did not show up in the top five concerns for board members.

“The basic themes that came from all of those groups had much in common,” Olsen said. “What we were hearing was the importance of advocating for public education at local, state and federal levels; a background of working with students and families in poverty; visibility within classrooms; and racial, equity and inclusion training.”

The superintendent search played out through several phases, starting with developing a leadership profile of what the best candidates would look like. In the third phase applications were collected, between March 12 and April 9 in 2021. MSMA provided the initial screening of 15 applications and presented 12 that were completed and accepted by SAD 17’s Screening Committee for consideration.

“The screening committee was made up of 26 members,” Olsen explained. “It was an extremely large group, but we were encouraged to leave it that way, as we are such a large district. It was made up of the eight members of the ad hoc committee, principals, teachers, parents and community members. The high school and middle school each had representation, as did the small and large elementary schools. There was also one person who brought experience in special needs.”

Concurrent with the application process, the ad hoc committee developed a Selection Committee and two interview committees. All members of the screening committee also sat on the First Interview Committee and were joined by a representative of Oxford Hills Technical School.

Between April 14 and 16 the Screening Committee narrowed the candidates from 12 to five for initial interviews. First interviews began in April following spring vacation and were conducted via Zoom.

“In the meantime we solicited questions from the ad hoc committee that were finalized into a list with the guidance of MSMA’s search team,” Olsen said. “Each candidate had to answer the same questions.

“Two individuals, including myself, would read the questions to the candidate and the interview committee would score their answers using a rubric [process].”

The answers were forwarded to MSMA to be tallied. Of the five candidates, two of them were extremely close with high scores and were selected for second interviewees. One person was in-state and one was out-of-state.

The candidates were blind to interviewers, identified only by number. That blind prevented committee members from searching social media and news outlets for posts by and about candidates, including Henson, or search for stories published about candidates in their previous or current positions.

The local candidate wished to remain anonymous, as they were currently employed by another school district and did not want that community to be disrupted by their pursuit of a different position.

Third interviews with the two top candidates were done by the 21-member school board, in person.

Henson ultimately emerged as the top candidate and was named new superintendent. She signed a four-year employment contract and began working for SAD 17 on July 1.

Within a few months a number of administrative leaders left their posts. And while Henson could count on some support within her staff, school principals began bracing against a steady stream of resignations and retirements until Jan.18, 2021 — when Oxford Hills Education Association presented the school board with a vote of no confidence against Henson and a list with 27 complaints against the superintendent.

In hindsight, Olsen could not speak to what possibly more revealing information about Henson’s leadership that the MSMA search committee may or may not have considered.

There was no post mortem review of the work done during the superintendent search process.

Olsen is no longer school board chair, and she said she believes candidates’ information available publicly through social media and news reports will be open to scrutiny in the future.

“I suspect that some individuals on our committees could have found that information, had they known (their names),” Olsen said. “But every member had to go through training before they could serve on any committee. It was mandatory training, and with that we reviewed state and federal laws pertaining to hiring as well as our district policies, including confidentiality agreements. Volunteers had to sign and return a confidentiality statement.”

Just six months into her role as superintendent, Henson was placed on paid administrative leave as employees revolted against her, backed by the OHEA and the Maine Education Association.

The board swiftly installed Heather Manchester, the district’s longtime curriculum director as assistant, acting superintendent on Jan. 30 to restore stability for the district’s 600 employees and 3,300 students.

One school in particular, Agnes Gray Elementary in West Paris, was demoralized by an alleged incident involving improper physical restraint of a child that occurred during the first week of school.

The school principal and other employees eventually claimed they were silenced by Henson with threats of retaliation. The principal finally resigned last December, outlining to the school board in her letter of resignation the trauma and toxic treatment her staff had endured for months under Henson’s leadership.

A parent of an Agnes Gray student filed a complaint with the Oxford County Sheriff’s Department, and by early April the sheriff’s office forwarded a criminal investigation report to the district attorney’s office. In addition, Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services sent confidential findings of its own investigation to those who were involved with or witnessed the Agnes Gray incident.

SAD 17 conducted an internal review of the incident and launched an investigation by a third party, and those findings have been reported to the district’s board of directors.

The district attorney’s office, DHHS and the SAD 17 Board of Directors have all steadfastly declined to comment on their respective investigations.

On April 4, Henson tendered her resignation, which was accepted by the board as part of a negotiated settlement, under which the district paid Henson just over $174,000 in a partial buy-out of her contract. Within days she left the state to take up residence in Atlanta, Georgia.

Now it is up to the board to determine a path forward. Natalie Andrews, who has chaired the school board since last July, says directors have not determined what comes next.

Andrews told the Advertiser Democrat that the issue will be addressed at the board’s next meeting, scheduled for May 4.

One option will be to hire an interim superintendent while directors determine a timeline for hiring a permanent administrator. Another option is to name Manchester, whose appointment of assistant superintendent was met with relief district wide, as the interim leader.

Andrews was adamant that the board’s priority is to heal the Oxford Hills community before settling on a new superintendent.

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