Congratulations Assistant Superintendent Todd Allen

I was at sea, but I still watched Wednesday's eventful school board meeting.  It covered new enrollment forecasts from the Long Range Planning Committee, the draft warrant including another loser field bond and news that the budget leads to a local school tax millage increase of 6% in Madbury.  I want to eventually talk about all of these, but let's start with the big news.

Oyster River High Principal Todd Allen was chosen as Assistant Superintendent.  He takes over for Carolyn Eastman, who recently resigned. Todd Allen has been a great principal at ORHS since he sorta lucked into the job after the bad board inexplicably rejected superstar candidate Justin Campbell in April 2011, leading to a student walkout. Then Oyster River Middle School Principal Allen was promoted, and now four and half years later he gets promoted again. Like many in the community I've known Todd a while now, and I am happy to congratulate him.  I'm sure he's going to do a great job.

Of course, now we have to find an ORHS principal again.  Superintendent Morse said a plan to fill the position will be presented at the next meeting.

Curriculum Development seemed to be most of Carolyn Eastman's job, and she seemed really into it. She'd wax on endlessly at the podium about Star or Atlas or Smarter Balanced or tools for measuring the alignment of the curriculum with Common Core.  I've always found the part of school board related to actual education rather tedious, but I was glad Assistant Superintendent Eastman was into it and would make sure it was right.  I guess we'll find out how Assistant Superintendent Allen sees the role.  I've been to a lot of school board meetings and I don't recall seeing Todd exhibit any particular enthusiasm toward curriculum development.  Maybe it happened while I was dozing.

Allow me to gripe a bit about the hiring process.  I actually knew someone who was applying, so I didn't try to get on the 15 member interview committee that included administration, teacher, staff and parent representatives.  I think most people would agree that it would have obviously been a conflict of interest if I was on the committee.  But surely everyone on that committee knew Todd Allen.  I don't know if he was the only internal candidate, but it's pretty likely that most people on the committee knew Todd and didn't know almost all of the other candidates.   Why is this not the same conflict of interest that I felt?

I guess what irks me is the superintendent wanted to do an inside search only all along.  The board and public pushed back and got a wider search.  But in the end the superintendent seems to have gotten the inside candidate he wanted.  Did I miss the hint on October 7th when he told us how Principals Dennis Harrington and Jay Richard never aspired to superintendency because they love being with their kids, but didn't mention Todd?  

I wish Assistant Superintendent Allen good luck and great success in his new position.