Last week, The Valley Reporter learned that Laurie Greenberg of Moretown, the new third- and fourth-grade teacher that Warren School hired last month, is not currently licensed to teach in the state of Vermont.
Greenberg's elementary education license expired in 2007 and her middle school education license expired in 2008. According to Warren School Board chair Mike Ketchel, however, Greenberg has contacted the Vermont Agency of Education about obtaining a two-year provisional teaching license and has until August 10 to submit the required paperwork to the state. She will be licensed by the time school begins, Ketchel said.
Warren School's decision to hire Greenberg, in conjunction with its decision not to renew the employee contract of former administrative assistant Laurie Jones, has "raised questions in our community about intentions and procedures," school board member Adam Greshin read from a prepared statement at the board's meeting on July 7.
As for the selection process for the new teacher, Ketchel explained that the school principal is responsible for the recruitment of applicants, who are then reviewed by a hiring committee made up of the school's staff, teachers and parents. Once the hiring committee makes a recommendation, the superintendent is responsible for vetting that applicant to ensure that they are licensed or eligible for licensing and meet all of the other standards of the school before bringing them before the school board and recommending them for the position. The school board then contracts with the new employee.
"By the time that the school board gets the name of the person recommended for the position we only hear that one name and the selection process has already been completed," Ketchel said. "In this particular case, there were three rounds of applications reviewed by the hiring committees," he said.
Greenberg sat on the Warren School Board for the first round of applications and then resigned in order to apply for the position. Of the final hiring committee, which was made up of 10 people, eight voted to make the recommendation to hire Greenberg and two abstained from voting.
A staff profile for Greenberg provided by school principal Jill Ballou follows:
Holding a bachelor of science and master of arts in education from Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, Greenberg will join the Warren School community as a third- and fourth- grade teacher for the fall of 2015. She began her teaching career in 1995 where she taught fifth grade at Hillside School, an all-boys middle school in Marlboro, Massachusetts. While at Hillside, she was the second teacher ever to be nominated by the parents to receive the GEM award (awarded to the teacher that goes above and beyond what is required as a teacher). After Hillside, Greenberg moved to Vermont and from 1999 through 2001 taught second, third and fifth grades at the Mountain School in Winhall, Vermont. After the Mountain School, she went onto teach a variety of grades at Leland and Gray Union School in Townshend, Vermont, and was invited to teach at the Governor's Institute on Asian Studies.
Most recently, she was the eighth-grade language arts teacher at Green Mountain Valley School. During the summer months, she works at Craftsbury Outdoor Center where she coached running camps for high school and adult athletes. Relocating from southern Vermont to Warren, she has been part of the Warren School community since 2009. She now lives in Moretown.
