Superintendent's FORUM

September 2010
Dear Parents and Guardians:  

School has opened and contrary to my plans and those of the State Department of Education, I am still the Interim Superintendent here at Katzenbach. The story, in its simplest form, is that despite two rounds of advertisement and one round of interviews, the interview team was not able to find a person that they were confident could provide leadership to the school. It seemed that a search for a school administrator at the beginning of the school year was unlikely to draw viable candidates and it was therefore decided to postpone the search to later in the school year and time so that the new superintendent could take over on July 1 or earlier.

I felt uncomfortable leaving school without leadership and I reached out to Cynthia Sternfeld, who was then the Director of Campus Life but planning to retire December 1, and proposed that rather than both of us retire, we would both stay until June 2011 sharing the responsibilities of leadership on a part-time basis. Ms. Sternfeld, also uncomfortable with leaving a vacuum agreed to my proposal. Ms. Sternfeld is now the Assistant to the Superintendent and carries all the authority of the Superintendent. We believe this arrangement will permit ample time for advertisement and interviews allowing for smooth transitions for the new Superintendent and Director of Campus Life as well as a smooth transition for Ms. Sternfeld and I into retirement.

We are very excited about the upcoming school year and have identified a number of achievable goals, all of which will lead to improvement in the educational and residential programs at the school. We hope to reconstitute our sign language evaluation program, and the Shared Reading program for younger children and their families.  Additionally, we want to focus on the organization of our curriculum and make it more accessible to parents. We also want to improve the bandwidth at the school for educational purposes as well as improving our woefully inadequate videophone service. Lastly we want to support the initiation of residential curriculum which will organize our residential program into domains which will support both social and educational growth.

We will keep you informed as we make progress on our goals and the search for the new Director of Campus Life and Superintendent. We are anticipating another great school year and are looking forward to making every effort, everyday to improve the school.

Best Regards,

Ron Goodwin