Columbus Municipal School District received 21 applications for superintendent, the district’s board of trustees reported during its regular meeting Monday.
The Mississippi School Boards Association, the firm conducting the search for a new CMSD superintendent, has closed the application process.
CMSD board president Jason Spears said trustees will meet with MSBA representatives April 25 at Brandon Central Services to discuss the candidate pool.
“There may be some in that group that do not qualify for one reason or another, but we won’t know that until the meeting,” Spears said.
MSBA also has completed its report from recent stakeholder meetings held throughout the community regarding the superintendent search. The trustees each have a copy of the report, Spears said, and it will soon be shared with teachers, administrators and the public — although Spears didn’t specify when.
“This is a report from the meetings of the business community, the stakeholder and parents meeting at Cook (Elementary), the meetings with teachers and administrators as well as the responses from the school board,” Spears said. “If it’s OK with the board, I’d like to have (Interim Superintendent Craig Shannon) post them to our website for our teachers and administrators to have access to and also get those reports to the media so that everyone can see what stakeholders and everybody who is vested in this process have said they are looking for us to take into consideration as we move forward.”
CMSD trustees are looking for a new superintendent after deciding late last year not to renew Philip Hickman’s contract past June 30. The board later terminated Hickman, citing misappropriation of district funds among other things, and appointed Shannon as interim superintendent.
Hickman has appealed the termination. Even if he wins the appeal, his contract non-renewal would stand.
In other business, certified public accountant Leslie Shivers reported a clean audit of CMSD’s finances for this school year.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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