Key deadlines are approaching for two metro school districts hunting for new superintendents.
Atlanta and DeKalb County targeted summer dates for hiring new school chiefs: DeKalb planned to have a new leader in place by July 1, and Atlanta expects to make its final selection June 25.
In Atlanta, city school board members will receive an update Monday on their search to replace Superintendent Beverly Hall, who leaves June 30.
At least 45 people have applied for the job, according to the board’s search firm, Illinois-based Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates. The firm has said private interviews with about five candidates could start as soon as the end of this week, if the board decides to stay on schedule.
The board afterward would make public the names of three finalists. It would make its final selection June 25, after the finalists meet the public and board members conduct a final round of interviews.
That schedule may depend, however, on other pressing issues.
Board members, sanctioned in January by Atlanta Public Schools’ accrediting agency for poor governance, are immersed in mediation that likely will result in a leadership change. Chairman Khaatim Sherrer El announced under pressure late last month that he would step down, a move meant to win support from Mayor Kasim Reed, among others, although a formal vote has yet to be taken.
The board also faces the release as soon as this month of results from a 10-month state probe into tampering with student achievement tests. In a videotaped farewell address to district employees two weeks ago, Hall acknowledged educators cheated and said the findings of the criminal investigation will be “alarming.”
Meanwhile, the DeKalb school board is rebounding from the public collapse of its last attempt to hire a new superintendent.
Almost 60 people applied for the job, Chairman Tom Bowen said. In March, the board introduced three finalists for the position, but none ended up getting the job. Board conflicts and contract disputes caused top pick Lillie Cox to withdraw from consideration.
Now the board is trying to figure out what direction to go in next. No one has been formally interviewed since the last round of finalists, Bowen said.
“Obviously, our goal was to have the permanent super in place by July 1, but forcing the deadline isn’t as important as making the right selection,” Bowen said.
Progress has been slowed over the past few weeks by other pressing deadlines, namely the need to approve a budget and a construction wish list for the upcoming penny sales tax vote.
Bowen said board members are having more discussions about who they want to pursue for the job. Bowen said the meltdown of the last search hasn’t deterred other candidates from applying. Potential applicants have since come forward and expressed an interest in the job, he said, but the district hasn’t decided to reopen the search.
DeKalb parent Marshall Orson, co-president of the Emory LaVista Parent Council, said Fulton and Cobb county schools, which recently completed successful searches for new superintendents, have attracted the kind of high-profile candidates that DeKalb should be looking for.
Orson said he thinks the board should consider keeping Interim Superintendent Ramona Tyson for two years to allow her to implement changes and offer some stability as the board of education prepares to downsize from nine to seven in 2013, as mandated by state law.
In Cobb, the school board is expected today to finalize the contract of new Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, the head of the Dallas Independent School District, after the mandatory 14-day waiting period.
Fulton’s new superintendent, Robert Avossa, formerly of Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district in North Carolina, started work Wednesday.
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