List of Warren schools chief hopefuls reduced to 6

Photo

The Rev. Phillip Shealey

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

The city board of education has narrowed its focus from 29 candidates for superintendent to six — five of them having a doctoral degree and all of them being from outside the Mahoning Valley.

Three of the final six are employed by the city school districts in Akron, Cleveland and Marietta. Two others are employed as educational consultants in the Detroit area, and one is dean of academic affairs for Bryant & Stratton College in Cleveland.

The board will conduct interviews with three of the candidates at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. The board will interview the three others at 9 a.m. Friday. The interviews will be during private sessions.

Patty Limperos, a member of the Warren school board, said the board considered having public meetings with the superintendent finalists to allow the public to meet them and ask questions but “yielded to the advice of the” Ohio School Boards Association and decided against it.

Instead, the board has invited six members of the public, representing six community organizations, to participate in the second set of interviews, to be conducted May 27. At that point, there will be three finalists left.

One representative each from the following groups will participate in the interviews: the Warren teachers union, the Trumbull County Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, the Northeast Ohio Multicultural Arts Committee, the Financial Advisory Committee of the Warren Board of Education, the mayor’s office, and the Warren citywide parent-teacher organization.

Each of those groups will choose who the representative will be, Limperos said.

The ministerial alliance is composed of about 40 ministers. The organization became vocal after a Warren police lieutenant admitted to uttering racial slurs while talking to two black men while he was off duty in 2009.

The Rev. Phillip Shealey, president of the ministerial alliance, said he is pleased with having community members involved.

“It sounds real good because it allows the community to have some input on the incoming superintendent,” he said.

The multicultural arts committee sued the Warren city schools last year in a failed attempt to stop the demolition of Warren Western Reserve High School. Among its members is Annette McCoy, who urged the school board to replace its former superintendent, Kathryn Hellweg, and allow the community to participate in the selection of the next one similar to the method used by the Youngstown Board of Education last year. Youngstown, however, had open forums with its finalists — as did Youngstown State University last year.

Kendall Lee, the consultant with the OSBA who is helping Warren schools in the selection process, has recommended that the interviews follow a structure, including specific questions to ask all candidates.

The community members will participate in the selection process through the interviews, but the board will make the ultimate decision on whom to hire, Limperos said.

The board hopes to make its final choice by late May or early June and have the new superintendent on the job in June.