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The Norfolk School Committee may decide next week whether to take another step toward hiring the next King Philip superintendent to lead Norfolk’s elemen­tary schools. Both school committees are looking for a new superintendent to begin July 1. The question is: Will it be the same per­son? The Norfolk School Committee plans to discuss options with the King Philip School Committee on Wednesday, Feb­ruary

10. For Norfolk, those appear to be either joining King Philip’s search with an eye to sharing a superintendent with the regional grades-7-through-12 school district or trying to hire either an interim or permanent superintendent for just the town’s kindergarten-through-sixth-grade school district. The King Philip School Committee is scheduled to hire a new superintendent in mid-April. Norfolk School Committee members got an earful from parents and other town residents during a public hearing this past Wednesday night, with many saying the timing for trying to share a superinten­dent

with King Philip isn’t right because of the forthcoming school building proj­ect in Norfolk. Supporters of the idea say that the two school districts can use the cost savings to hire an assistant superintendent for curriculum, offering each dis­trict a position that neither cur­rently has. But Mike Kulesza was one of several speakers who expressed disbelief that the School Com­mittee

is considering sharing a superintendent with King Philip at a time when a school building project is in the next future and teachers contract negotiations are expected to take place next year.

He noted that Don LeClerc and the Freeman-Centennial School principal, Lucia God­frey, plan to retire June 30. “We’re about to build a new school. We’re about to negoti­ate

a new teachers’ contract. One of our principals is going to be retiring this spring. We don’t have a superintendent. I look at this board, and thank you for serving on the board, but I don’t see a lot of experience. “You know, which one of you has built a school before? Which one of you has negoti­ated a teachers contract before? Which one of you has hired a superintendent or a principal before? So I think this com­mittee

has put this town in a very, very dangerous situation, all right? This track that you’re exploring right now. And my question to you is: What were you thinking?”

School Committee mem­ber Ross Gilleland expressed frustration with the opposition to the shared-superintendent proposal. He noted that when he spoke about the idea of shar­ing

services with nearby school districts to save money during a Candidates Night forum in April 2008 shortly before he and Marie Zullo were elected to the School Committee, the au­dience clapped.

“We had committed to do that. I as an elected official was committed to doing it. That’s what I was thinking. To live up to the commitments I made to this town. To live up to the com­mitments

that I made to the Board of Selectmen, that I said I would do this, that I wouldn’t just continue to hire a super­intendent if there were other models to do it. “That’s what we’re doing here, is we’re looking at other options that might be beneficialto the town. That’s what I was thinking.”

Later in the meeting, after just about every speaker had hit the plan either over timing or substance, Gilleland said he was surprised by the vehemence of the opposition. “And I guess I’m confused, because … the reason I person­ally felt the need to continue to pursue this was because that’s what the Board of Selectmen asked us to do. That’s what the community applauded me [for] when I said I would do it. So I am just completely at a loss as to the reaction. “Because to me the only thing that’s changed [is] instead of talking about talking, two committees actually commit­ted to talking. So I’m confused at why people are so upset with what people expected me to do when they elected me,” Gille­land said. School Committee member Zullo appeared to leave some wiggle room about sharing a superintendent with King Phil­ip, noting that no final decisions have been made. “When we took this vote on the sixth, the vote was just to continue to look at it,” Zullo said. “I don’t know how many of you saw the meeting that night, but one of the things that was stressed was … right up to the day that they hired the super­intendent and signed that con­tract at any moment we could say, ‘Sorry, we don’t think this is the way to go and we’re going to do our own thing’.” At the time of the 3-2 vote January 6, Zullo said, none of the committee members was aware that LeClerc would retire early or that Lucia Godfrey would announce her re­tirement as principal of Freeman-Centennial School. “We do have the new building coming up. None of us want that to be in jeopardy,” Zullo said.

Zullo said it’s imperative that school of­ficials look for cost savings, though she ap­peared to leave wiggle room about sharing a superintendent with King Philip.

“But at the same time, we’re in a situation where we’re not getting more money from the state. The budgets aren’t getting better. We may come up with things that from year to year help us get by. But long term there are a lot of different things that we have to look at. We have no guarantees that the revenues in the town are going to improve, or that we’re going to get more money from the state,” Zul­lo said.

She continued: “Does that mean we committed to do this? No. We committed to look at it. There’s a lot of answers we don’t have. Do some of the things that have happened over the past [sev­eral] weeks change perhaps the way some of us feel about it? “Absolutely. Because there are a greater level of concerns now. But at the time that this vote was made, we didn’t have all the information that we currently have, that you all have the benefit of having when you made your judgments about things. “And also, the only thing that we agreed to was to talk to King Philip about this, and find out what the options were. Would I say, as I said that night, perhaps the cart got put before the horse? That as a committee we should have done a better job of communi­cating about this?

“Absolutely. That’s clear. We made a mis­take and I apologize for that. But, we didn’t commit to anything. We committed to looking into it, finding out the benefits, what would the long-range benefit be to the community, if there were any. That’s what my vote was for that night,” Zullo said.

The joint meeting of the Norfolk School Committee and the King Philip School Com­mittee to discuss whether the two school dis­tricts should share a superintendent is sched­uled for 7 p.m. Wednesday, February 10 at King Philip Middle School at 18 King Street in Norfolk.