VOORHEESVILLE — With a year of transitions ahead, the school board here announced this week the appointment of the district’s middle-school principal to the assistant superintendent for finance and operations position. Dr. James Franchini will finish the school year at the middle school before taking on his new duties as assistant superintendent.

This week also saw the deadline for applications to fill the position of Superintendent Dr. Teresa Thayer Snyder, who is retiring in June. The wealthy district has roughly 1,200 students.

Franchini, a Voorheesville native, applied to be the assistant superintendent for finance and operations to “have an impact on how the district is functioning, instead of just one school,” he said. His current role as middle-school principal is very different than his new appointment, he said.

“Right now, I’m on the curriculum side – day-to-day building operations stuff. The district is more wide-ranging,” he said. In his new role, Franchini said, he will focus on operations and finance more than education.

Franchini completed his doctoral work on educational leadership at The Sage Colleges in 2014. He started his job as middle-school principal in Voorheesville in 2011.

His new position gives him “an opportunity, through the budget process, to still impact the educational side, the curriculum side,” Franchini said, but allows him to “touch on the other pieces of the puzzle, as well.”

Until July, when he takes over as assistant superintendent, Franchini will be mentored by Sarita Winchell, who worked for the district in a similar position for 37 years before retiring in 2011.

Seven months ago in June, the school board appointed Charles Snyder, who has no relation to the superintendent, to Franchini’s new position, but Snyder unexpectedly resigned recently.

“It’s a tenure-track position,” Superintendent Snyder said of the assistant-superintendent job. Franchini will earn $109,000 with a three-year probationary contract, Snyder said. Winchell will remain as a business consultant, Snyder said, to get Franchini through his first time for each budgetary event.

When the job posting for the assistant-superintendent-for-business job closed in April of 2014, Voorheesville had only four people to interview. After Charles Snyder’s resignation, Superintendent Snyder said, “Dr. Franchini came forward and presented his credentials.”

Asked if there continues to be a dearth of business administrators, Snyder said, “If I were mentoring someone, I would say, 'Get your business certification, as soon as possible.’ ”

Deadlines met

Unlike business-administrator jobs, positions like that of Voorheesville’s superintendent garner great interest, according to Charles Dedrick, the district superintendent for the Capital Region Board of Cooperative Educational Services, who is coordinating the superintendent search for Voorheesville.

“We’re still getting applications in. January 19 is a post-mark deadline,” Dedrick said. BOCES has received approximately 30 applications so far, he said.

“In some areas of the state, it is difficult to attract superintendents,” Dedrick said. “Getting 30 applications is a good number – it’s a solid number. The Capital Region is a place people want to come to. Some places [in the state] get six or seven.

“We’ve done a lot of work reaching out to potential candidates,” Dedrick continued. He coordinates superintendent searches with two or three other team members, he said; in Voorheesville’s case, Lynne Wells and Kevin Baughman are assisting him. 

“We do these searches as a team approach — it takes a lot of time,” Dedrick said. Team members attend 15 to 20 evening board of education meetings and conduct interviews, he said, for each district they assist in a search.

“The board [of education] puts a lot of time in, too,” Dedrick said. “That’s the reason we use a team and not just one person.”

BOCES and the Voorheesville School Board have a target date of mid-April to appoint a new superintendent, to allow the chosen applicant to give 90 days’ notice to his or her home district. The Voorheesville board will review the applications next week and interview by February. Two more rounds of interviews, with community and school group representatives, will take place in March, Dedrick said, and a candidate can be appointed in April.

“By July 1, Voorheesville will have the new superintendent in place,” he said.

Middle school principal

Snyder told The Enterprise that the final superintendent candidate can begin as early as the April appointment to contribute to the search for a middle-school principal.

“There will be a middle-school principal,” Snyder said. April through June is “a legitimate time for a search, Snyder said.

“It’s a great assignment. It’s a great school,” she said. The pool of candidates for principals is greater, she said.
“I feel very confident that we’ll get a middle school principal,” Snyder said. “We’re looking forward to the future.”