Repost: A community vision for Holliston's next superintendent

The following text originally appeared in the December 2025 issue of the Holliston Town Pages

A comunity vision for Holliston's next superintendent.

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The Holliston School Committee has approved the Leadership Profile for the district’s next

Superintendent, a key milestone in identifying the district’s next Superintendent. Current Superintendent, Dr. Susan Kustka is preparing for retirement at the end of this academic year.

The leadership profile, developed and presented by the search firm Hazard Young Attea Associates (HYA), showed that relationship-building appears to be the number one priority the district seeks in its next Superintendent. The profile was developed based on community

feedback that equated to hundreds of hours-worth of interviews with community members and responses from a publicly available survey.

Over the last month, HYA has met with approximately 125 people across the district including the Holliston PTO, Holliston SEPAC, Office Staff, Teachers, Students, Municipal Representatives, and through public forums.

A total of 38 community members attended the public forums, a number that HYA’s Doug Schuch cautioned, “I think it would be hard to derive any great findings from that

sample size.”

Despite low attendance numbers at the community forums, Susan Guiney of HYA was

confident that the information gathered at those forums was inline with community values. She stated, “What we heard at those meetings was consistent with everything

else.”

Now that the School Committee has approved the Leadership Profile, HYA will advertise the position, and start screening candidates using the Leadership Profile as their “guiding star,” Susan Guiney described.

From there, a School-Committee-Appointed Screening Team will interview candidates and narrow them down to several finalists that will be interviewed publicly with the School Committee. The Screening Team consists of: 2 School Committee Members (Hilary Bresnahan and Dawn Neborsky/Sarah Fitzgerald, alternating), 2 School Principals (Dr. Slaney & Mr. List), 1 Select Board Member (Ben Sparell), 1 Teacher’s Union Representative (Alex), and a retired Holliston Public Schools employee (Keith Buday).

However, earlier public comments from community members called for the School Committee to reconsider the composition of their Screening Team to better represent areas of improvement in the district, specific to Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

One proponent, Laurie Markoff of Diverse Holliston was “surprised that the screening committee was chosen without community input and then surprised that the committee included no one with specific expertise and commitment to equity.”

She referenced the recent Equity Audit that reported students who are from “undervalued populations, students with disabilities, and students who are LGBTQ+” are struggling the most. “I expected that one of the goals in hiring a new superintendent would be to address these gaps in our system,” she said.

Diverse Holliston President, Barbara Fritts-Worby found the community forums to be inequitable for underrepresented groups in the district. She expressed disappointment that Diverse Holliston wasn’t more involved in the process from the start. She described Diverse Holliston as “an access point to communities and residents that are often invisible in Holliston.”

She went on to say many people simply do not feel safe speaking up: “You cannot access these voices using the normal mechanisms of expecting them to speak up in public comment or to come to a community focus group. Some of these folks in town are literally having their very humanity and constitutional rights trampled on by the federal government. And so, it is not physically safe for some of them to speak up.”

Public comment ended with a plea to reevaluate the structure of the Screening Team to include professionals aligned with areas of need, ensuring candidates are being asked the right questions and evaluated through the lens of our district’s most pressing priorities.

At the conclusion of HYA’s presentation, School Committee member Dan Alfred stated, “there’s going to be more community input as we go forward. This is not the end.”

According to the School Committee, HYA will now recruit and screen candidates nationwide through January to build a diverse pool aligned with community-identified leadership criteria. In February, the Committee will review leading candidates, hold interviews and public finalist sessions. The district aims to hire a new Superintendent by the end of that month, with a start date of July 1 for the 2026–27 academic year.

The Candidate Profile presentation is now available to view on the School Committee website and full discussion can be found by viewing the November 13th School Committee Meeting on HCAT’s YouTube Channel.