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Lenox Public Schools hire firm to assist with strategic planning

LENOX – The school committee has selected a consultant to assist in the drafting of a strategic plan for the school’s future.

School Committee and Strategic Planning Subcommittee Member Michael Moran gave the subcommittee’s unanimous recommendation to award a contract to the firm Public Consulting Group (PCG).

The goal of the strategic plan is to formulate a plan for Lenox’s school system with a three-to-five-year horizon. As a part of this, it is set to tackle such thorny issues as school choice and regionalization.

“We always felt that we wanted a partner from a consulting standpoint,” said Mr. Moran, who cited wanting to mitigate any biases from the individual subcommittee members as the main reason they’d sought out a consulting firm.

Mr. Moran detailed an RFP had been sent out to 14 firms, and the subcommittee received six responsive proposals back. These proposals resulted in face-to-face interviews with three firms: NESDEC, Future Management Systems and Public Consulting Group (PCG). While all three firms were responsive to the RFP, PCG rose to the top.

“PCG was the strong first choice,” said Mr. Moran.

He also cited the extremely positive feedback from two of PCG’s three references, Dr. Steve Constantino, the superintendent for the Willamsburg-James City County School Division in Williamsburg, Va., and Dr. Alex Apostle, superintendent of Missoula County Public Schools in Missoula, Mont.

“He said it’s still paying dividends,” said Mr. Moran, paraphrasing Dr. Apostle’s praise of the firm’s work in Missoula.

PCG’s third reference has not yet been contacted.

The other subcommittee members present also gave a good assessment of PCG.

“They did the most professional presentation and the most complete response to the RFP,”said David Naseman, a community representative on the subcommittee.

“I felt that we’d get more onsite time with these people,”said then Subcommittee Member Robert Vaughan.

School Committee Member Frances Sorrentino said some people in town were cautious about the town working with an outside firm again: “They’re worried about getting another Lenoxology. Any comment on that?”

“I’m certainly not used to putting my name to something that’s going to fail,” said Mr. Moran, who added there would be a large amount of community engagement in the strategic planning process, which he said had been lacking in the Lenoxology marketing campaign.

“We don’t want to, as a community, be involved with something that is a lame duck,” said School Committee Chairman Don W. Fitzgerald, stressing the committee would be very involved with the strategic plan. “If we’re gonna be involved in something we’re going to do it…as hard and thorough and to the best of our abilities to make it come to fruition.”

The committee unanimously voted to award PCG a $39,500 contract, with the caveat that when the language is finalized, the contract will be a quality one.

The composition of the strategic planning subcommittee was also changed around at the June 5 meeting, with Chairman Fitzgerald joining the subcommittee, replacing Robert Vaughan, who will stay involved with the committee as an alternate.

“This is something I’ve been waiting to do when we got to this point,” said Chairman Fitzgerald.

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Posted by on June 13, 2013. Filed under Education News,News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
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