AMHERST — If a potential temporary superintendent for the Amherst, Amherst-Pelham Regional and Pelham public schools is identified by elected committee members Tuesday, any discussion and decision on an appointment will happen at an open meeting.

Ben Herrington, who chairs the nine-member Regional School Committee that includes representatives from Amherst, Shutesbury, Leverett and Pelham, and Peter Demling, who chairs the Superintendency Union 26 Committee, made up of Pelham and Amherst representatives, sent a letter to the community Monday to clarify the need to go into executive session on both Monday and Tuesday.

The emergency meetings were scheduled to begin a process of finding an interim leader after Superintendent Michael Morris announced Friday that he would be taking an indefinite medical leave on his doctor’s orders as a result of mental health issues.

The closed-door sessions, with the Monday one at the middle school’s professional development center and Tuesday’s at the high school, are solely to meet with the schools’ attorney, Herrington and Demling wrote.

“We will be meeting in executive session with our attorney to talk about how we can negotiate a contract with an Acting Superintendent and what the terms of that contract might be,” Herrington and Demling wrote. “We will not be discussing or deciding who the Acting Superintendent should or will be in executive session.”

That discussion and possible decision will occur in open session Tuesday, set to start at 6 p.m. at the high school library after the executive session. Public comment is expected to precede any decisions.

Morris has been the superintendent, both on an interim and permanent basis, since August 2016, overseeing the regional schools for the four towns, as well as the elementary schools in Amherst and Pelham. Elementary school students in Leverett and Shutesbury are under the separate Superintendency Union 28, which also serves Erving, New Salem and Wendell.

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