Butler School News and Announcements

Dear Daniel Butler Elementary School Parents/Guardians,

As you know from her recent announcement, Ms. Betancourt will be moving to London, UK in January, 2022.  Her last formal day in Belmont will be Friday, 12/23/2021.  I am sure you join me in supporting Ms. Betancourt on this exciting news.

While we will certainly miss her leadership of your child’s school, we want to assure you that we are doing everything in our power to ensure that the transition to a new Principal is as smooth as possible.  To that end, we want you to know that we are doing the following things:

• Immediately following her announcement in early October an “Interim Principal” position was posted.  We are currently in the process of reviewing applications and resumes.  To date, there are 18 applicants in the pool.
• We are also tapping into the applicant pool for a similar position that we have posted (Burbank School, Interim Principal).  To date, we have received 12 applications for that open position.  Similarly, we will be considering all of those candidates.
• Additionally, we are networking with contacts we have in the field of public education – the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents (MASS), The EDCO Collaborative, as well as personal contacts in local school districts.  From those efforts, 7 additional candidates have been identified.  We are in the process of reaching out to all of them currently to discuss interest, availability, qualifications, etc for this open interim position.
• We have a meeting scheduled with Butler educators on Friday, 11/12/2021 @ 8:00am to discuss their needs and preferences in a new school leader.

As per our usual process for interim positions, we will not be conducting a traditional search process.  Instead, we will be appointing an interim position in the short term, then conducting a formal search at a later date when we can be certain that a larger candidate pool is available.  We will inform the Butler School community as soon as we have an interim candidate selected.  Our hope is to implement an overlap process in December while Ms. Betancourt is still in her current role, so we are anticipating an early December announcement.

I hope that the above action steps provide you with the assurance that we will do our best to ensure that we hire the qualified and capable Principal that your children deserve.

We congratulate Ms. Betancourt and her family on this exciting news, and thank her for 6 years of wonderful service to the Butler community!

Respectfully,

John P. Phelan, Superintendent