WESTFIELD – Students in the city aren’t the only ones enjoying a snow day to start their week, as the Westfield School Committee’s first meeting of 2015, scheduled for tonight, has also been cancelled.
While a new meeting time and date has not been established at press time, the Committee will elect a new vice chair and secretary at their next meeting, with Secretary Ramon Diaz, Jr. expected to succeed Cindy Sullivan as vice chair.
“Cindy has expressed interest in giving someone else an opportunity to sit as vice chair and I’ll be putting my name in the hat for that,” said Diaz today, adding that he hasn’t heard of any other committee members interested in the position.
Diaz added that he would then be nominating Sullivan for his old post as secretary.
“I’d like to see Cindy as secretary with her wealth of experience,” he said. “The meetings would run very smoothly.”
The new vice chair will also assign committee members – a group composed of Chair and Westfield Mayor Daniel M. Knapik, Kevin Sullivan, William Duval, Jeffrey Gosselin and Diane Mayhew, in addition to Diaz and Sullivan – for sub-committee assignments for the coming year.
In 2014, the committees included Instruction and Curriculum – which dealt with computers, athletics, technical learning and career prep, chaired by Duval – Human Resources and Policy, chaired by Mayhew – Educational Planning and Technology, chaired by Diaz – and Finance, which oversaw transportation, maintenance, operations and building in addition to finance and was chaired by Kevin Sullivan.
Diaz said that, as vice chair he will be sitting on all of the sub-committees as a member, meaning he will have to relinquish his chairmanship for Educational Planning and Technology. He added that he will be looking for committee members with the “most experience” for subcommittee assignments and chairmanships, praising the work of Mayhew and Duval on Human Resources and Policy and Sullivan on Finance.
