Community Corner

OPINION: Appointing Mooney Superintendent of Port Washington Schools

No better candidate for job, school board president said.

Karen Sloan, president of the Port Washington Public School's Board of Education, said the following during Tuesday's board meeting at Schreiber High School, prior to the vote approving Dr. Kathleen Mooney as superintendent of Port Washington Public Schools. 

It’s nice to have so many people here from the community on the evening that we will vote on the appointment of our Superintendent of Schools.  

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As you know, Dr. Kathy Mooney has been serving as our Interim Superintendent since July. Although we as a Board already knew Dr. Mooney as having successfully served the District as Director of Pupil Personnel Services and Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources and General Administration, we felt it necessary for our community to see that we exercised our due diligence in our search for the best person for this position - our most important responsibility.

Through the course of the search we received over 40 applications, and each one was carefully evaluated. Simultaneously, we as a Board and a community had the opportunity to see Dr. Mooney in action. In just over three months, Dr. Mooney completed and submitted APPR, as upon her start no portion of the process had even begun – a herculean task. At the very onset of her appointment as Interim Superintendent, she was faced with having to staff two of three critical Central Administrative positions, as well as a building principal. She did so with tremendous creativity, insight and unquestionable success. Dr. Mooney then navigated this District through a hurricane, literally. All seven of our schools opened only one week after the storm. That speaks for itself.  This was all on top of her day-to-day responsibilities that do not go away because something else pressing has come up.

Find out what's happening in Port Washingtonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Dr. Mooney’s continued success in building consensus with all parties through collaboration, trust, respect and integrity is exactly what we needed from our Leader.  We have had input from all parts of the community, both within the schools and outside of it, and the feedback has been nothing but positive and appreciated by the Board in our evaluation.   

Dr. Mooney endured and excelled at what was, perhaps, the longest, most difficult interview in the history of education. Throughout the entire process and throughout her 13-year tenure in the Port Washington School District, Dr. Mooney has conducted herself with grace, dignity, and a style all her own. There was simply no better candidate for the Superintendent of Schools in Port Washington than Dr. Mooney, and that is the decision that brought us here this evening.

It is with complete confidence and support that I will vote for the appointment of Dr. Mooney as our next Superintendent of Schools.


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