Executive Director Search

Update: February 29, 2024: Important Announcement: Foxborough Regional Charter School Names Next Executive Director

Foxborough Regional Charter School (“FRCS”) is proud to announce the hiring of Toby N. Romer, Ed.M as its new Executive Director. Mr. Romer is currently the Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education at the Newton Public Schools, where he has been since 2015. He will join FRCS at the start of the next school year.

Prior to his leadership role with the Newton Public Schools, Mr. Romer had an eighteen-year career with the Boston Public Schools (“BPS”) in a variety of roles. He served as the Director of Professional Development and Data Inquiry for the Orchards Garden K-8 School, an Inquiry Facilitator and Leadership coach for the Boston Plan for Excellence, the Head of School for Brighton High School, and the Assistant Head of School of the English High School. Bilingual in Spanish and English and conversant in French, Mr. Romer was a world language teacher at two BPS schools and at the Technical University of Ambato in Ecuador.

Mr. Romer, who holds an Ed.M. in School Administration from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and an A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard College, notes that he is “thrilled to have been selected as the next Executive Director of FRCS. Throughout the interview process, I was deeply impressed with the commitment to the school I witnessed from families, students, teachers, administrators, and the Board of Trustees. Also, as an educational leader who has focused his career on equity, inclusion, and anti-racist practices, I am thrilled to join such a uniquely diverse community which is so well aligned with my core values.”

“Mr. Romer has the diverse educational background needed to lead our distinct and complex K-12 charter district. Throughout the interview process, he impressed our entire school community with his knowledge, dedication, spirit, and temperament. Our Board of Trustees was looking for someone exactly like Mr. Romer. We are thrilled he will be joining FRCS at the start of the next school year,” said Kathleen Crawford, Chair of the FRCS Board of Trustees.

The appointment follows an extensive nationwide search supported by Eos Transition Partners.

Update: February 1, 2024: Executive Director Search and Next Steps

Dear FRCS Community,

We are writing to update you on the process for selecting the next Executive Director for FRCS. To date, close to seventy candidates have expressed interest in the role. Fifteen of those candidates were screened by our search consultant, John Tarvin. Of those, the Search Committee elected to interview seven. After conducting those initial interviews and having follow up conversations, the Search Committee has invited three finalists to interview for the Executive Director position on the following days:

Kevin McIntyre - Monday, February 5, 2024
Toby Romer - Wednesday, February 7, 2024
Meg Dussault - Monday, February 12, 2024

Cover letters and resumes of the candidates are attached above. Although candidates know their names are being shared, please keep their identities confidential amongst the FRCS community. As part of the final interview process, the Search Committee wants to give the school community an opportunity to meet with candidates to learn more about their potential leadership of FRCS. Please see the attached schedule for meeting dates and times, and click HERE to sign up for your stakeholder group if you are interested in participating. High school students will have an opportunity to express interest at school.

Although John will be on campus some of the time, time with the candidates will be self-directed. So, when you meet with candidates, feel free to ask any questions you would like. We are sure candidates will have questions for you as well. Below are some questions that John has shared for your consideration.

Tell us about your interest in the position. Why FRCS and this job for you now?
As the Executive Director, you would help set the tone for the organization-wide culture.
Tell us about the ideal culture you’d like to see at FRCS.
As you’ve looked at the position profile, what will you need to learn to be successful in this role
What support would you need from us to be successful in this role?
How would we experience you as a leader and a manager?
How would you define equity and inclusion, and how would you ensure that the FRCS community would both feel your conviction and benefit from your efforts toward DEIB?
What most excites you about the position, and what challenge is most concerning to you?

Ultimately, the Board of Directors is looking to the school community to help round out its impressions of the candidates and is interested in hearing your feedback regarding each candidate’s ability to:

Be an effective internal and external leader of FRCS
Create and sustain FRCS’s unique culture
Inform instruction and impact student achievement at the school

Along with your feedback on the bullets above, please provide any additional feedback you would like to share via email to John Tarvin at [email protected] by 12:00 pm on February 15th. John will consolidate all feedback for the board without individual attribution.

At the conclusion of their day on campus, each candidate will participate in a final, in-depth, and crucial interview with the Board of Directors who ultimately will consider the impact of those final interviews, professional references, and your feedback to make a final hiring decision.

Thank you in advance for your participation in the search process and, as always, for being part of the FRCS community!

Best,

Anissia Vixamar
Trustee, FRCS Board of Trustees

Todd Tetreault
Secretary, FRCS Board of Trustees

Update: November 20, 2023: Position Posted: Please spread the word!

Click HERE to view the profile.

We are pleased to share the next steps of our Executive Director Search with the FRCS Community!

In the past week, the candidate profile has been finalized, and job board postings and a tailored outreach plan are being executed. Do you know someone who is qualified and may be interested in the position? We encourage all of you to help spread the word about the opportunity. Please forward the attached position profile to your networks. Below is some language you can use in an email to send to your professional contacts.

Thank you for your continued support!

-------------------------------------------------------------

Dear (INSERT NAME HERE),

Eos Transition Partners is conducting the search for an Executive Director of Foxborough Regional Charter School, and I’m hoping you can help spread the word about this opportunity to your networks. Also, if there is someone you’d like to recommend for the role, you can directly contact our Eos Transition Partners consultant, John Tarvin, at [email protected] or 617.304.8436.

For the complete position profile and application guidelines, you can also visit this page of the Eos web site – or see this attached profile.

Thank you for your assistance.

(SIGN YOUR NAME)

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Update: November 5, 2023: Update to the FRCS Community on the Executive Director Search from Board of Trustees Chair Kathleen Crawford:

Good Morning Foxborough Regional Charter School Community,

I’m pleased to share the next steps of our Executive Director Search. As you may remember from our September update, the Board has contracted with Eos Transition Partners, a search firm that will assist us in the process of recruiting our next District-Wide Leader.

Input from the FRCS community is vital to this process. We appreciate and value your voice in making such an important decision for our future. We sent a survey to all families in September to allow all stakeholders to share their thoughts. We held focus groups for staff and faculty in October. These stakeholder groups shared perspectives that created the profile of our next school leader. We will use this profile to shape the interview questions.

We also contacted stakeholder groups in October to invite them to apply for the Search Committee. A strategic group was formed that includes voice from as many perspectives as possible and is ready to meet and begin the next phase of this process. This group will be responsible for interviewing and recommending candidates to the full Board of Trustees. The Board will interview the final candidates.

The members of this committee for the 2023 Executive Search will include:

Parents/Guardians: Farah Thomas, Djimy Alexandre
Faculty/Staff: Leeanna Brown, High School, School Counselor, Leah Barton, District-Wide Mentor Coordinator, Karen Corrado, Elementary School, Grade 2 Teacher
District Leadership: Heidi Berkowitz, Deputy Executive Director, Mallory St. Brice, Director of Human Resources
Board of Trustees: Todd Tetreault, Board Secretary, Anissia Vixamar, Board Member

The next steps will be posting and networking. The Executive Director position will be posted on job boards, beginning a process of networking and outreach for recruitment purposes. Eos will develop a candidate pool and begin screening interviews between November and the first of the year. In early January, the Search Committee will conduct interviews and recommend finalists to the Board of Trustees.

The goal is for the Board of Trustees to interview the finalists and extend an offer of employment to the best candidate by mid-February. Candidates will remain anonymous throughout the initial process. Only candidates who make it to the final round will be named. These interviews will be conducted publicly by the Board of Trustees.

Once the process is near completion, parents and students will have an opportunity to meet the final candidates. After that time, the Board of Trustees will make the final decision, with community input, on the selection of the next Executive Director.

Sincerely,

Kathleen Crawford
Board of Trustees Chair
Foxborough Regional Charter School

Update: September 11, 2023: We're excited to announce that the Board of Trustees has selected Eos Transition Partners to lead our Executive Director Search!

The search firm will be on site October 3, 2023 to meet with stakeholder groups to learn about imperative qualities and characteristics that the next leader must have to be successful here at FRCS.

A parent survey will be distributed in mid-September to allow families to have input into the process. An invitation for consideration to be part of the search committee will also be distributed in the coming weeks.

Foxborough Regional Charter School Board of Trustees Chair Kathleen Crawford provided this update on the search for our new Executive Director on Monday, April 3, 2023.

Good Afternoon,

On behalf of the Board of Trustees of Foxborough Regional Charter School, it is my pleasure to update you on the Executive Director search. In the Fall, the Board assembled a search committee to review resumes, interview candidates, and pass along qualifiers to the full Board for final interviews and decision-making.

This task is very important to us as the governing body and to staff, students, and families alike. The weight of this decision of who will be the next leader of our School Community could not be more important and we are committed to doing whatever it takes to get it right.

As you will remember, the Board hired Ray and Associates, a National Search Firm to assist with this process. Ray and Associates sent out a survey to all community stakeholders and later conducted both on-campus and ZOOM focus groups throughout the community, to gather information and create a profile of the person who would be most successful and impactful in our school environment.

The Search Committee worked diligently from January through March to find the most qualified candidate to run our school. The committee reviewed 10 applicants and selected 4 to interview via ZOOM. The result of this process identified 3 candidates that were qualified to move forward. As the committee prepared to send the finalists to the full Board, two of the candidates accepted positions in other school districts. Due to this unexpected circumstance, the Board decided the integrity of the process would be minimized if only one candidate was passed forward for a decision.

For this reason, the Board of Trustees has decided to restart the search process over the next few months and look at it through a fresh lens. We are hopeful that the results will be more productive, and we will keep you informed as we move through the steps.

In the meantime, I am extremely pleased to announce that Dr. Eddie Ingram, our current Interim Executive Director has agreed to stay on in his position until at least December 2023, and possibly through June 30 of the next school year. Dr. Ingram brings with him 40 years of experience from 14 districts in 3 states, and we are very fortunate to have him here at Foxborough Regional Charter School. His presence since November 2022 has brought stability through his expertise. In his short time with us, he has had a significant impact on culture and has begun important work to refocus our community on shared values and innovative instructional ideas. We are thrilled that he has agreed to extend his tenure while we take the time we need to ensure we make the best decision possible as we work to hire a new school leader.

I look forward to keeping you informed.

Sincerely,

Kathleen Crawford
Board Chair, Foxborough Regional Charter School

August 2022 to March 2023

The Board of Trustees has hired Executive Search firm Ray and Associates to assist with the national search for a new Executive Director.

The Board values the input of all Foxborough Regional Charter School stakeholders. All stakeholders are being brought into the process and the board is accounting for this in several ways:

All staff, students, and community members were invited to complete the electronic survey in September 2022..
A representative group of staff, students, and community were invited to meet face-to-face with representatives from Ray and Associates in November, 2022.
A representative group of staff, students, and community will have interview time with the finalists in January 2023.

This inclusive process allows for everyone to have a form of input through surveys, meetings, and interview committee representation. The goal is to provide many opportunities for community members to report on strengths and weaknesses of the candidates to advise decision making. Ultimately it is the responsibility of the Board to select the next Executive Director.

Below please see the revised approved process and timeline.

Timeline Notes:

August 2022: Foxborough Regional Charter School Board of Trustees announces search has begun. Hires Executive Search Firm Ray and Associates to assist with the national search.

September 2022: All Foxborough Regional Charter School stakeholders are invited to complete a survey to help create a position profile.

November 2022: Ray and Associates travel to Foxborough and hosted in-person focus group meetings for all stakeholder groups to learn more about what our community is looking for in a district leader.

November 2022: The FRCS Executive Director position is posted nationally. Candidates can apply on the Ray and Associates website. The deadline to apply is January 2, 2023.

January 2023: Search Committee Formation: The Board of Trustees works to form a search committee to assist in the virtual interviews of the top candidates. The committee will be made up of 3 staff members, 3 community/parent members, 2 Senior Leaders and 2 Board members. Students will be involved in the process after finalists are selected. It’s important to note that search committee members will conduct the search process up to the point that finalists are identified but will not be members of the selection committee. The final selection will be made by members of the Board of Trustees. Participants will represent all three FRCS schools (ES, MS, HS) and will represent our unique and diverse FRCS Community.

Communications with Information Regarding the Search:

An Update for the FRCS Community on our Executive Director Search

An Important Message for the FRCS Community from the Board of Trustees

FRCS Executive Director Search Focus Groups - Share Your Input!

Express Your Interest to Participate in the Executive Director Search Committee

Executive Director Position Advertisement:

Posted on nationwide jobs boards by Ray and Associates. Qualified candidates were asked to apply online by January 2, 2023. Contact [email protected] with questions. Please do not contact the school or FRCS Board of Trustees.

Foxborough Ad