Interim Special Ed Director Appointed

A search committee will be looking for Attleboro's next special education director in the winter, but in the meantime the school district has a person to run the program on an interim basis. Marisa McCarthy was appointed to the position at the school committee meeting on Monday.

McCarthy has spent the past two years as the director of pupil services in Granby, Mass. Prior to that, she worked for seven years as a special education supervisor in Chicopee.

Among her successes in Granby, Superintendent Pia Durkin said, was her ability to increase state reimbursement money for special education from $34,000 in 2010 to $190,000 in 2012. 

"She has been able to institute systemic changes, providing consistent adherence to the federal and state regulations, and has instituted quality programs for students with an array of disabilities despite significant budgetary challenges," Durkin said.

McCarthy told the committee she had become familiar with the Attleboro school district last year after meeting outgoing special education head Lisa Martesian at a leadership program. She has since done additional research.

"I was always very impressed that you were always right in front of the curve with a lot of things that were going on here … so I was very interested in Attleboro … I just was so excited with your momentum," said McCarthy, who said she will apply for the permanent position.

The appointment did not come without controversy. School Committee member Barbara Craw, who was on the search committee, said she was disappointed the notice for the position was limited to the national education job postings website SchoolSpring. Noting that McCarthy was the only qualified candidate who applied for the job, she said ads should have been placed in the Boston Globe, New York Times and Providence Journal, among other sources.

"I feel I was put under pressure to make a decision when we had some more time," Craw said. "We could have run out and gotten some more candidates."

She added that the committee may have still made the decision to hire McCarthy had the advertising been expanded, but the process would have been better. She abstained during the appointment vote, while the other six committee members in attendance voted in favor.

Durkin defended her decision to limit the advertising. She said that because it is a national website, SchoolSpring casts a larger net than newspaper advertisements would do.

There were actually two rounds of advertising. The first one listed the job as interim, and only garnered four applications. The second one removed the interim tag, and 20 applications were received. However, Durkin said, 13 of those people were not properly certified and six of them "were not appropriate for Attleboro for various reasons."