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RCS launches new superintendent search

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By Melanie Lekocevic

Capital Region Independent Media

Lauren Gemmill, district superintendent for Capital Region BOCES, outlines the process for hiring a new superintendent at the Jan. 22 meeting of the RCS Board of Education. Courtesy of YouTube

RAVENA-COEYMANS-SELKIRK — The RCS Board of Education launched its search for a new superintendent at its Jan. 22 meeting.

The board announced in December that it would not renew District Superintendent Dr. Brian Bailey’s contract when it expires at the end of this school year and would launch the search for Bailey’s replacement.

Lauren Gemmill, district superintendent for Capital Region BOCES, outlined the search process should the board decide to work with BOCES, and following the presentation, the board voted unanimously to use the organization’s services.

Gemmill said selecting a new superintendent is one of the biggest decisions a board of education has to make.

All employees in the district ultimately report to the superintendent, she added, making the position vital.

She outlined two search processes — confidential and traditional. While they largely follow the same format for recruiting and hiring a new superintendent, there is one critical difference — in a traditional search, there are stakeholder interviews of candidates, where members of the community, from teachers to parents to community members, are invited to be part of the interview process.

In both search models, the community is involved by answering surveys and participating in a public forum, but in the confidential model there is no panel of community members participating in the interview process.

There are pros and cons to both, Gemmill said.

“If the board is looking to attract a diverse group of leaders that have served as superintendents or currently serve as superintendents in a district and have a very successful, seasoned experience, we see boards gravitating to the confidential search,” Gemmill said.

The reason for that is that if a current superintendent is interviewed in a traditional format, they have to go to their board of education and let them know they are interviewing for another position. Some may be reluctant to do that before knowing they are hired.

“That does not mean that if you don’t do a confidential search, you will not have successful sitting, experienced superintendents in your pool,” Gemmill said. “There could be many reasons why a superintendent is looking for that next move — alignment to the goals and the priorities of the district, it may be a bigger district, it may be in a geographical location that they are looking to relocate to. In all of those instances, it is very plausible that the superintendent would be having open dialogue with their board of education about their next professional move.”

But still, the search could be limited in terms of attracting sitting superintendents, she said, and might be more likely to draw applicants from building leadership such as principals and other administrators.

A confidential search would also involve the community, just not for the interview phase.

“When we do a search, we start it with a community survey and also community forums,” she said. “That is all focused on getting community input.”

The survey, and later the forum, would focus on five main questions — what are the strengths of the district, what needs to be improved, what characteristics and personal attributes should the new superintendent have, what will the new superintendent need to work on first, and additional comments.

A confidential search typically takes four to five months, with traditional searches taking a couple of weeks longer, with extra time allotted for the interviews with potential candidates.

Once the job is advertised, Gemmill will conduct individual screening interviews with all applicants, and then they will move on to the board of education, which will conduct its own interviews. The goal, Gemmill said, is to whittle the list down to six to eight candidates.

After formal reference checks are done, the board will conduct a second round of interviews and make the final decision, which would likely happen around the end of June.

After Gemmill’s presentation, the board of education voted unanimously to work with BOCES on the search process, and then took an informal vote on which search model to use. All but two members chose the confidential route.

Board of Education President Michael Deyo opted for the confidential process.

“I think the most important thing we are going to do in our time on the board is pick the next superintendent, so the biggest responsibility thrust upon us is making sure we get the best person for the job and the highest chance we have to succeed in that is having the most robust candidate pool that we can,” Deyo said, adding that he himself went through a mid-career change and would not have done so if he couldn’t interview for his new position confidentially.

Board member Matthew Miller had a different perspective.

“In getting elected, we all said we want to have the most transparent board. One of the worst things in our community is to not have them involved,” Miller said, adding that while surveys and a public forum would be part of the process, it wasn’t sufficient. “If we want to really have that true buy-in for employees, the staff and the community, they want to feel part of it.”

The second board member who wanted to use the traditional search process was Jennifer Molino, for similar reasons. The others voted for the confidential search process.

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