Search for schools chief to mirror Youngstown’s

By Ed Runyan | February 25, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

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Warren Superintendent Kathryn Hellweg

WARREN

The process to select a new superintendent for the Warren schools could look a lot like the one used last year to pick Youngstown’s new superintendent.

The Warren school board accepted the resignation of Superintendent Kathryn Hellweg at Tuesday night’s board meeting. Hellweg’s last day is Monday.

The board will pay Hellweg about $55,000 to buy out the remaining five months left in her contract, which called for her to earn $116,987 this year.

Kathy LaSota, deputy director of school-board services for the Ohio School Boards Association, which will conduct Warren’s search, said the process the organization will use in Warren will be nearly identical to the one used in Youngstown. In fact, Warren probably will work with the same OSBA consultant who worked with Youngstown.

The board approved hiring the OSBA to handle the search at a cost of $6,900 plus expenses. The cost is usually around $8,000 altogether, LaSota said. The OSBA also conducted the search in 2005 that brought Hellweg to the district.

A search takes about three months from start to end, so the five months the district has between now and the traditional start of a superintendent’s contract — Aug. 1 — should be ideal, LaSota said.

An OSBA consultant will begin to meet with the Warren school board as early as a week from now to begin to learn what type of candidate the board wants.

After talking to the board, the consultant will talk with groups of district staff and the public “to either validate or invalidate whether the board is aligned with the community,” LaSota said.