Beth’s Goodbye’s and the Superintendent Search

  … A going away party for Beth Everitt at the last Board of Education meeting.

It was a nice little soiree with a sweet video, lots of people commenting (including yours truly) about their memories of working with Beth, music, and a nice spread of “Southern” finger-food. There were several emotional moments and I was quite moved by all of it. I got up to speak and told of my first encounter with Beth and how I really wanted to be mad and not like her. Of course, that didn’t happen because she is a very welcoming and open person and she immediately disarmed me and took care of my issues. I wanted to say more about how she inspired me to become involved in working with APS to improve communication (and so much more) but I got sidetracked when speaking about the first time she met our boys. I then became a puddle of gooey emotions, because she was so fantastic with the boys, and couldn’t continue my little speech. Eh. When you get me going about the boys, well, let me just say that I can become speechless when overcome by emotion. You might want to remember that if you are ever looking for a way to shut me up.

Anyway, I wished her all the best and thanked her for all of her help. I’ve been both supportive and critical of the things that have happened within APS over the last two years but, I have to say that I’ve always appreciated Beth’s communications with me and all of her help in taking care of our situations at our school and with the bus company. I only wish we could have done more to fix that danged website. That was, after all, my first objective. Someday… it will change. I hope.

The superintendent search is still continuing. The processes are being refined, as we roll through the holidays, and I’m looking forward to the next phases of the search. The 27 member search committee will soon be reviewing the applications provided by the search firm. They will then review and recommend the best candidates from those applications. I’m hoping the next step will be for the board to interview the top candidates and then the cream o’ the crop candidates will have an opportunity to answer interview questions in front of a public audience. This will give everyone a chance to hear their answers, see how they perform under pressure, and will give everyone a first glance at, potentially, their next superintendent of schools. As I said, this process is still being ironed out between the board, the committees, and the search firm. It’s all looking very good from my vantage point.  The order of how and when the candidates are interviewed may change but it’s on track to happen, whatever process they decide.  The BOE is really doing a fantastic job of keeping everything open and appropriate. I commend them on all of their efforts.  They have all invested quite a lot of time, commitment, thought, and sensitivity into everything they’ve done.  They also have a very talented and commited support staff working quite diligently (as in, eating, sleeping, and breathing the entire processes) to make this happen.  Good job, everyone!

I am currently in the process of writing first-draft interview questions that may or may not be used in this process. I’m going for “specific and measurable” types of questions taken directly from the community input information that was compiled and formed into the recruitment form completed by the search firm. The recruitment form is on the APS website (under superintendent search) if you’d like to take a look at it. The candidates won’t have much time to answer the questions so it is best that they are succinct and relate directly to the specifics of what our community is looking for in a superintendent.

We don’t reconvene until after the holidays but I will do my best, despite these very busy times, to keep everyone informed. January will be a very busy and crucial month to the superintendent search as we will finally get down to dealing in actual candidates.

Exciting stuff!

Stayed tuned…