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Diverse panel to help select city schools’ chief
By Denise Dick
By DENISE DICK
YOUNGSTOWN
The deadline for applications is next Friday.
The Ohio School Boards Association is conducting the search, being paid $6,700 plus expenses.
OSBA will whittle the number of applicants down before presenting them to the board.
A 25-member search committee appointed by the school board will conduct telephone interviews with candidates, further narrowing the list to between three and five finalists.
Community forums will be conducted, allowing people to ask questions of the finalists.
School board members will interview finalists and select the superintendent.
Source: school board president
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Youngstown City School Board president Anthony Catale
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Wendy Webb
Selection of the city’s next schools superintendent will be a collaborative effort with input from people from across the community and from different walks of life.
“This isn’t going to be the school board’s superintendent; it’s not going to be the employees’ superintendent,” said Anthony Catale, school board president. “It’s going to be our superintendent — the community’s.”
Next Friday is the deadline for applications for superintendent.
“We’ve already received applications in the double digits,” Catale said.
Wendy Webb, superintendent since 2004, announced in May that she would retire, effective Dec. 31, with about seven months left on her $122,500-per-year contract.
The Ohio School Boards Association, which is receiving the applications, will do the initial screening, dividing the candidates into three categories: those who exceed expectations, those who meet them and those who don’t.
“We will conduct a comprehensive screening process,” said Kendall Lee, a consultant with OSBA.
OSBA will work with two outside consultants who will meet with Lee and review all of the applicants.
“We’re going to review the applications — the good, the bad and the ugly, so to speak,” Lee said.
The consultants then will rank the applicants, with that information given to both the school board and the academic-distress commission.
Catale said the board is looking for someone with urban-school experience both as a teacher and as an administrator.
OSBA is being paid a $6,700 base fee plus expenses for the work.
After OSBA’s initial whittling down, a 25-member search committee, appointed by the school board, will interview candidates via phone, narrowing the list to between three and five finalists.
Community forums will be scheduled with the finalists, similar to those conducted in the selection of a new president at Youngstown State University.
Board members will conduct in-person interviews with finalists before making a selection.
The goal is to have a superintendent in place by late August so that individual has time to work with Webb through a transition period.
Catale said the search committee is composed of people from across the community including board members, parents, teachers, administrators and businesspeople.