Who will be Fall River's next superintendent? Search narrowed down to 4 finalists

FALL RIVER — The Fall River School Committee announced the names of the four superintendent candidates who will now be vetted publicly .

The School Committee members voted unanimously Monday night to accept the four recommendations of the superintendent search committee headed by Glenn Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees .

Out of the four candidates the only internal School Department staff on the list of candidates is assistant superintendent and chief academic officer Tracy Curley.

Curley is the former principal of Henry Lord Community School, from 2014-17, and served as associate principal of Durfee High School for four years prior to that.

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Other finalists include Ana C. Riley, the superintendent of Bristol-Warren Regional School District in Rhode Island , a position she’s held for 2 ½ years according to her LinkedIn profile.

Riley also previously served as superintendent for Portsmouth, Rhode Island, for five years. She left in 2019 to take a position as deputy commissioner for instructional programs at the Rhode Island Department of Education.

East Bridgewater Public School Superintendent Elizabeth Legault is also one of the finalists. According to The Enterprise , she was hired by the school district in 2015, previously serving as the superintendent of the White Hall School District in New York.

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Norwood School Superintendent David Thompson rounds out the list of Fall River schools chief candidates. Thompson has held his Norwood post for the past seven years, and previously served as assistant superintendent of the Blackstone-Millville Regional School District, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Time of the essence to select new city superintendent

The School Committee, which will now hold public interviews with the candidates, are in a time crunch to get someone in place as the school department’s leader with current Superintendent Maria Pontes leaving for retirement on June 30.

“I think the timing is quick. We need to move quick,” said School Committee member Kevin Aguiar. “These candidates have been named publicly and we do have a timeline.”

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Aguiar said the interviews were the most important piece of the process, “to get to ASAP.”

Mayor Paul Coogan, the committee’s chairman, agreed.

“As far as scheduling, we’ll want to start as quick as we can, maybe by next week,” said Coogan, who suggested they set a special meeting to set up the process.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Who will be Fall River's next superintendent? Search narrowed down to 4 finalists