School district culling pool for top job
By Steve Herring
Published in News on March 8, 2015 1:50 AM
The field of candidates has been narrowed from 30 to 15 applicants for the office of superintendent of the Wayne County Public Schools.
School Board Chairman Chris West made that announcement following a nearly three-and-a-half-hour closed session Wednesday morning.
The session was the continuation of an hour-and-a-half closed session held during the board's Monday night meeting.
Another closed session to further narrow the field to between five and seven is tentatively scheduled for March 16.
"We have been in discussion of our superintendent search, and since we went into closed session we have narrowed our applications down from 30 to 15," West said when the board returned to open session. "We are going to have correspondence with those 15 to inquire about their interest -- if they are still interested, if some of them may have already have gotten other employment.
"At that time, we are going to give them a period of time to respond to our attorney their interest and if they still have interest in the job."
Once that information has been gathered the board will compile a list to continue the search process for the new superintendent, West said.
Board members did not comment on the search after returning to open session.
The 15 remaining applicants are a mixture of in-state and out-of-state applicants, West said after the meeting.
"We have not had contact with any of the 30 other than the initial applications," West said.
That is why the 15 who made the first cut need to be contacted to see if they remain interested in the job, he said.
Once the field is narrowed to between five and seven, the candidates will be brought in for interviews, West said.
The progress made at the March 16 session will factor into whether another closed session will be need to discuss the list, he said.
"If we get it down to a manageable number to interview, then we will do that," West said. "If not, we will have another work session to get it down to a number that we feel that we can interview -- five or seven people, I think."
The school system is not using an outside agency to help with the search.
Instead West has said that the school board is looking at demographics -- school systems that are comparable in size and structure to Wayne County Public Schools.
The position was advertised on the North Carolina School Boards Association website.
The association offers a service that it charges a fee for, but the school board chose instead just to use the free-listing site.
It notes that Wayne County is ranked 20th largest in the state, with an average annual enrollment of 19,400 students.