BOE to Conduct Super Search
By Chris Seymour | Correspondent at October 15, 2023 | 6:15 pm | Print
The Board of Education (BOE) last week appointed itself as the “superintendent search committee” and voted not to utilize the services of a search firm, which can cost $20,000-$24,000.
The BOE hopes to have a replacement for current Superintendent Kelt Copper - who will be leaving at the end of the 2015-16 school year - hired by April 2016.
“The BOE will work with our HR(human resources) department and our BOE secretary to manage the process,” BOE President Sharon Beloin Saavedra wrote in an email to school system staff on Oct. 6, the day after the BOE appointed itself as the search committee and to utilize internal staff to help organize the process instead of issuing a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a search firm.
Superintendent search process updates will be a standing item (monthly review) of the board’s personnel committee and it will be reported on monthly at BOE meetings, according to Beloin Saavedra.
“We already have a blueprint for the process,” she added, furthering that components of the process will include community forums, focus groups, stakeholder survey, developing a candidate profile, identifying the scope of the search, advertising, selecting interview committees, screening applications, scheduling candidate interviews and final selection.
Beloin Saavedra added that focus groups and community forums will be scheduled late October through early December. In fact, a parent forum on the search process/candidate profile is already on tap for Monday, Oct. 26 from 6:30-8 p.m. at the NBHS Lecture Hall.
“We would like to have a candidate profile ready to go and advertise the position prior to the December holiday break,” noted Beloin Saavedra.
The BOE president told The City Journal last week that she will be working with internal staff to schedule/organize stakeholder focus groups and community forums.
“The purpose of these conversations will be two-fold: to explain the process to our stakeholders and to seek their input into the development of a candidate profile [asking questions such as] ‘what do we need and want in our next superintendent? What qualities, characteristics and experiences are non negotiable?’”
The HR department is working on an advertisement plan/budget “providing a menu of options for the Board,” added Beloin Saavedra. “We must decide on the scope of the search to fully develop the advertising plan” though “the board has said that we do not intend to finance candidate travel for this process,” she said.
This past May, BOE members voted not to extend Cooper’s contract, which is set to expire in June 2016. At the time, Beloin Saavedra said of Cooper - who had been superintendent since July 2012 - “many BOE members felt his leadership style had run its course.”
