Provincetown School Committee Selects Next Superintendent

CCB MEDIA PHOTO
Provincetown Town Hall

PROVINCETOWN – After beginning with a field of 18 candidates, the school committee has made their final selection for Superintendent of Provincetown Public Schools in a unanimous 5-0 vote.

The school committee has entered negotiations with Suzanne Scallion to replace current Superintendent Beth Singer, who plans to retire in November.

“With Suzanne, I was immediately pleased that we had rethought the right retirees, and I think that came about because she had rated so high just on paper,” said School Committee member Tracy Kachtik-Anders.

“I found her to be very personable immediately. She knew stuff about us and I thought she had done her homework and I like that, she wrote down the questions and was great at answering them. She was natural with the kids and adults. I saw her interacting with them, not in a staged way but in a natural way. She knows the Cape well, she’s smart and is not flustered by tough questions.”

Out of all 18 candidates to apply, everyone but finalist Edgar Miranda – the former principal of a school in Bulgaria, declined to come in for an interview. That left the committee to bring in Scallion, who is already retired from a career as a superintendent.

Scallion brings a range of experience, beginning her career teaching for both the Barnstable and Sandwich public schools before taking on several administrative roles at schools in California.

“She had concrete examples of her work and experience in relation to our concerns. She had ideas. I liked her ideas for the banners for Commercial Street, like she was giving real examples of how she was going to promote the school,” Kachtik-Anders said.

“She seemed to know the rules between the administrators and staff – who is a principal, what teachers do, everyone’s roles were clearly understood. I liked that she understood the privilege and the curse of technology.”

Unique to Provincetown, the position is a part-time role that oversees the pre-K through eighth grade international baccalaureate school, paying a 2018 salary of $50,000.

Most of the candidates dropped out because of the offered salary paired with the high cost of housing in the town and the rest of the Outer Cape.

By TIM DUNN, CapeCod.com News Center 

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