What goes around comes around – Tom Drake is a finalist for Crossett Brook co-principal job
March 25, 2023 | By Lisa Scagliotti Three finalists for Crossett Brook Middle School’s co-principal position have been announced and one of them is … current school Principal Tom Drake.
Yes, you read that right.
Crossett Brook Middle School file photo.
That was the word on Friday shared by Harwood Superintendent Mike Leichliter on behalf of the 15-member selection committee charged with interviewing applicants and making a hiring recommendation to the Harwood Unified Union School District School Board.
The committee sorted through applications from 17 candidates and chose to interview five last Tuesday, March 21. They were further narrowed down to three finalists last week.
Leichliter sent a memo from the search committee to Crossett Brook Middle School families and staff with an update on the hiring process. He thanked parents, students, and teachers for sending in suggestions for interview questions. “We are writing to provide an update on the search as we are close to the selection of a finalist to recommend to the school board,” he said.
In addition to Drake, the other two finalist candidates are:
Jennifer Clark Durren - A Harwood school district resident and high school math teacher at Winooski Middle/High School.
Katelyn Liptak - A Harwood school district resident, Crossett Brook alumna, and associate principal in the First Branch Unified District in Tunbridge and Chelsea.
Drake has been principal at the 5th-through-8th grade middle school in Duxbury since 2009. In mid-January, Drake announced that he would step down at the end of this school year in June, saying that it was time for the school to have new leadership, and time that he had a change as well.
Crossett Brook Principal Tom Drake and Assistant Principal Josh Estes on the first day of school in August 2021. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti
Drake has been the sole administrator at the school since last fall when assistant principal Kellie Klasen who moved to Vermont from Chicago last summer, started in August but left by November. She has since taken a position in the Burlington School District. She replaced Josh Estes who left to move out of state at the end of the school year in June 2022.
A week after accepting Drake’s resignation, Leichliter announced that the leadership at Crossett Brook next year would use a co-principal model and that one of the co-principals would be Duane Pierson, presently assistant principal at Harwood for Harwood Middle School. Pierson has been with the district for 21 years and has served as principal at both Harwood Union Middle/High School and Moretown Elementary School before his current role at Harwood Middle School.
Drake said he was happy to hear of both the change in structure and the choice of Pierson for one of the Crossett Book co-principal jobs. More significantly, Drake said, the decisions were also a game-changer in how he viewed the job.
Providing context
On Friday, Drake sent a memo to Crossett Brook staff to address the understandable surprise and confusion that the finalist announcement might bring. He told the staff he wanted to offer context of his “unresignation.”
To do that, he shared the Feb. 27 email that he wrote to Leichliter where he withdrew his resignation. By that time, he explained, he had already applied to a number of other Vermont school principal positions and had had some interest: Stowe Middle School (he was one of two finalists, the district chose the other candidate); Burlington High School (he was one of three finalists, but that search was restarted). He had applied for the Middlebury Union High School principal job which just this Thursday held a Zoom forum for three finalists including Drake. Others on the list were middle school positions in Vergennes and at BFA Fairfax.
“To date, I have not applied for or experienced a position where both my head and heart say, ‘this is the one!’...not even close,” he wrote.
Then he explained the game-changer. “When it was decided that CBMS would adopt a co-principal model starting in 23/24, there was a pang of remorse in my gut as I had been lobbying for that model with [former Superintendent] Brigid [Nease] for a long while, with only one year of success when Stephanie Hudak and I served as co-principals. When it was decided that Duane would be one of the co-principals, I had another pang of remorse in my gut as Duane and I have spent a good deal of time envisioning/dialoguing/planning for the day when he and [I] would be working side by side as we wrestled with the possibility of one combined Middle School.”
Drake pointed out how he and Pierson already work closely together now, communicating just about every day. He told the superintendent he believed they would “make an excellent administrative duo, in many ways” based on their experiences and good working relationship.
“I would like you to consider me for this position,” he wrote. He joked at the irony of the situation, too. “I am ready to start a movement called ‘The Great Unresignation,’ and I will be the founding member!”
Drake closed his Friday note to staff saying, “I feel honored to be in the final three in the CBMS search, I look forward to the process unfolding next week, and I welcome any and all feedback – constructive or critical – from any and all of you at any time.”
In an interview on Friday, Drake said his “unresignation” came before the Crossett Brook application deadline and he was asked to submit a formal application.
Meanwhile, the district had advertised the position and had received a number of applications and a search committee was formed. The process is now at the final stage where the top three candidates will visit and tour the school for a half day either Monday or Tuesday this coming week. The format means Drake essentially will simultaneously observe while at work.
The candidates during their visits will meet with teachers and staff, visit classrooms to speak with students, tour the building, and observe general school operations, Leichliter explained in his Friday announcement.
The search committee will meet with each of the three co-principal finalists once more before deliberating to make a recommendation to the Harwood School Board. The board approves hiring decisions for principals and district-wide positions.
“A final recommendation will be made to the school board and shared with the community by Friday, March 31,” the superintendent wrote.
The School Board on Wednesday agreed to schedule a special online board meeting for Tuesday, April 4, at 6 p.m. to review and act on the committee’s recommendation.
Meanwhile, Leichliter said a similar process is underway to recruit and hire a new assistant principal for Harwood Middle School to succeed Pierson. It is a smaller committee, he said, given that the position is an assistant-level administrator and that choice would not need school board approval. Harwood Union Middle/High School has Co-Principals Laurie Greenberg and Megan McDonough.
“They have conducted interviews and had a handful of schoolwide visits from some candidates. We hope to have a candidate to the school board by the second meeting in April at the latest,” Leichliter said of the Harwood Middle School administrator search.
On the back burner: Middle school merger
Several years ago, Harwood School District leaders were eager to merge the two middle schools and it became a controversial topic. In March 2020, the school district’s proposed budget for the 2020-21 school year would have combined Harwood’s grade 7-8 students and Moretown’s fifth- and sixth-grade students at Crossett Brook without any changes to the facility. Temporary classrooms were proposed until an addition could be designed, funded, and built. Voters rejected that plan. In June 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was unfolding, the school board presented voters with essentially the same budget for a re-vote without any changes to where students attended schools and that version won approval.
An addition to Crossett Brook Middle School was proposed to be built in the section of campus near the main entry driveway. File photo by Lisa Scagliotti
Merger plans then slowed as the pandemic disrupted routines and school leaders focused on coping with the demands of navigating the public health crisis.
By May 2021, the school board approved a plan to merge just Harwood’s seventh and eighth grades to the Crossett Brook campus with the condition that a four-classroom addition be built onto the school first. The new construction was included in a nearly $60 million bond proposal that November, but voters turned it down for a myriad of reasons, a key one being the price tag.
Although it did not come to fruition, the 2021 plan for combining the middle schools envisioned a co-principal model in place at Crossett Brook once the school was expanded and classes consolidated there. Drake and Pierson at numerous meetings before the failed bond vote spoke in favor of the proposed arrangement.
Through 2022, the merger topic remained on the back burner as the pandemic continued and the school board recruited and hired a new superintendent; Leichliter started with the district last July.
Today, there are no plans in motion to alter the middle school configuration. There also is fading firsthand memory on the school board of its merger vote in May 2021 as only four of the board’s current 14 members were on the board at that time. (Chair Kristen Rodgers, Vice Chair Kelley Hackett, Jonathan Young and Marlena Tucker-Fishman.)
At last week’s school board meeting, administrators and board members discussed current building maintenance needs across the district. Leichliter in reviewing his ongoing goals addressed facilities and said he would like the district to work toward a facilities bond to put to voters by the fall 2024 election.
“We’re working under the assumption that we’re going to be renovating this [Harwood] building as a [grade] 7 through 12 building. We’re not looking to merge middle schools,” he said.
Asked after the board meeting what candidates for the Crossett Brook co-principal position are being told about the future of the district’s middle school configuration, Rodgers replied in an email to Waterbury Roundabout:
“We have not addressed a merger with the candidates because either option would not reduce students in the building and impact their position. Since the bond failed we feel the entire board needs to have a new and fresh conversation about the direction of Harwood. We are well aware of all the work Harwood needs but what the future holds as far as either a 7-12 or 9-12 building needs to be addressed first before any other work or discussion can occur.”
Crossett Brook Co-Principal Search Committee members are: Parents Dana Hudson and Lindsey Staples; teachers Sarah Pulaski, Tiffany Michael, Kathryn Delay; Dan Hunter, support staffer; student Fisher Misenko; school board members Life LeGeros and Cindy Senning, both of Duxbury, and Kelley Hackett of Waterbury; Waitsfield Elementary School Principal Kaiya Korb; Harwood Union MS/HS Co-Principal Laurie Greenberg; district Director of Facilities & Operations Ray Daigle; Assistant Principal for Harwood Middle School Duane Pierson (CBMS co-principal effective July 1); and Superintendent Mike Leichliter.