Monday, September 24th Superintendent Search Report from Board President Kathy Fisher
Board President Kathy Fisher, Vice President Art Lewis, Director Chuck Madden, and Director Brucie Rapport, along with acting Asst. Superintendent Sandy Mangano, attended the whole meeting. Board Director John McMeeken was able to join for the first half of the meeting, and Director Rich Booker joined for about the last hour:
“Dr. Steve Joel, the superintendent in Grand Island, Nebraska, and Dr. Glenn Smartschan met with us to start Phase I of the search process. We created a long list of all the characteristics the board members want in a new superintendent. From there, we combined similar items on the list and then voted to reach consensus on the top four items. Steve and Glenn will write short statements for each of the items and send them to us for review. These items will constitute the initial board search criteria and will be used to begin the search for candidates.
We also talked about the process for gathering community input for the superintendent search. Dr. Smartschan and Dr. Jacobsen will spend two days in the district, October 11 and October 12, and will conduct focus groups for various stakeholder groups, including administrators, teachers, other staff, students, parents, and community members. In addition, information will be collected through the M & J website for individuals who cannot attend any of the focus group meetings but would like to give input to the process of hiring the new superintendent.
We also talked about the process we will use for selecting the new superintendent, including the involvement of stakeholder groups. We agreed that we will seek input from all stakeholders through the focus groups. Then, M & J will advertise and recruit candidates. They will meet with the board to share information on all candidates and will identify their recommended list. We agreed that it is most likely we will want to have an initial round of interviews with between six and eight candidates, depending on the number M & J recommends. We may choose to hold these interviews using video conference, especially if some of the candidates live far away. Those interviews will be with just the board and Sandy, and all candidate names and info will be kept in strictest confidence. Following that first round of interviews, the board will select two or three finalists (Steve indicated that four finalists is probably too many), and we will bring each of those finalists to the district, probably along with their spouse, for a full day of interviews. Those interviews will occur on separate days for each candidate, but all interviews should occur within a week. During those interviews, several different groups of selected stakeholders will be interviewing the candidates. The resume for each candidate will be given to those stakeholder interviewers on the day the candidate arrives in the district. Groups will include teachers, administrators, staff, parents, community members, and students. All groups will be asked to provide input to group leaders, who will be chosen by the board, and those leaders will pass their input on to the board for review. Following the last full-day interview, the board will meet to deliberate and select the new superintendent.
According to information M & J shared with us this evening, they expect the advertising for the position will occur from October 1 through December 20. We expect to advertise in Education Week for two weeks starting about November 1 ($1,200 per week), in the PSBA ILS Journal (free for six weeks for PSBA members) from mid-October, in the American Association of School Administrators publication for one month starting November 1 ($295 per month), and on the M & J website (free - they get about 1,500 hits per week). M & J will be screening the applications from December 10 to January 1. They expect to present the candidates to the board in the evening on either January 17 or 18. We will have to wait to finalize the date until the new board members are elected, but please pencil both dates on your calendars for now. Interviews will be scheduled for, most likely, the last week in January and, for the finalist round, early in February. We would like to make the appointment at either our February 12 or February 26 board meeting.”