When the Columbus Municipal School District begins the search for a permanent superintendent, board members will have to come together, according to an official with the Mississippi School Board Association.
Dr. Mike Waldrop, director of the MSBA, spoke to board members Monday night during their monthly meeting. Waldrop said hiring a superintendent was a responsibility that rested solely on the shoulders of school board members.
“The most important decision you’ll ever make as a board member, you’re making right now,” Waldrop said.
“In Mississippi, the stakes are really, really high with the current accreditation,” Waldrop said. “The criteria you use to determine this and how you go about this selection process, I think it’s going to be critical to your schools and also to your community.”
Waldrop said the board must first decide what it wants in a superintendent.
“What characteristics, what abilities, what traits, do you want on a superintendent?” Waldrop said.
While making the list of what it wants in a superintendent, Waldrop said the school board needed to work together.
“The board coming together as a unified body is going to be key,” he said.
Once the board decides what it wants from a new superintendent, Waldrop said it then must decide the timeframe in which the hiring should place. He encouraged board members to “begin with the end in mind.”
Waldrop said the current school board has the “luxury” of taking its time in the search since it has an interim superintendent in place. Interim superintendent Edna McGill will serve in her position until June 2015.
“Y’all have the luxury, and this is really a good thing, of having plenty of time to do this and get it right,” he said. “So, I would encourage you strongly not to rush into the process. Take your time because you have time and that’s a luxury that most boards do not have.”
Once the search has started, it should take approximately two months to vet all applicants, Waldrop said.
MSBA will then present a list of the candidates to the school board.
“Once you get candidates in, we will present a report to you and it will be a very comprehensive report on every candidate,” he said. “We’ll offer a professional opinion on the technical side and what we found on talking with previous employers. We’ll tell you everything you need to know about them, everything we’ve heard about them.”
Waldrop again stressed that the board working together was critical to the search process.
“The good candidates will do research on the school district,” he said. “They’ll go back and research the newspaper, they’ll look at the state accreditation, they’ll look at all of this. And then they’ll start asking me questions, ‘Well, what was going on here?’ because they’re trying to determine is this something that they can manage, especially, the more competent superintendents. Are they going to step into a divided situation where they’ll be gone in two weeks or are they going to step into a situation where the whole board will be focused on certain criteria that the board wants to do. That’s a very critical issue with your candidates, especially your top candidates.”
The school board has not yet set a date when it will begin its search.
Sarah Fowler covered crime, education and community related events for The Dispatch.
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