By James Hanlon
Leader Staff Writer
The search for a new superintendent is underway after Supt. Tim Throne announced last month he will retire at the beginning of 2022. A new leader might not be seated until mid-February, though.
The Oxford School Board convened for a special meeting Oct. 28 to begin the search process with John Silveri, regional president of the Michigan Leadership Institute, a consulting organization serving K-12 schools.
The board has decided to open the search to external candidates outside the district, as well as internal, “to seek to get the best possible candidates,” Board President Tom Donnelly said. Hiring a superintendent is the most important job of the school board, he said previously.
This week, the district will collect input from district staff, administration, parents and the community to help create a “candidate profile” to set criteria for the next superintendent. A three-question anonymous survey posted on the district website will close Friday, Nov. 5 at 4 p.m.
Silveri, who has served as superintendent in Marysville and Waterford, will ask the same survey questions at face-to-face meetings with district staff and administration. He will incorporate that feedback into an official job posting that will go up Nov. 12.
The application deadline will be Dec. 13. During that month-long period, because of confidentiality, Silveri will not share with the board who is applying.
The board will meet in a closed session Dec. 16 to review all the applications and select the first round of finalists. “This is the one and only time in a superintendent search you can do anything out of the public eye,” Silveri said, “because of their right to confidentiality.”
He will show the board a spreadsheet naming every applicant, organized into three groups. People in Group A most closely match the candidate profile and have the most relevant experience. Group B is qualified with “some interesting experience” worth considering. And Group C would be candidates who are either unqualified or do not meet the criteria the board has specified.
“I’m not picking for you,” Silveri said. “Boards rarely only pick the people we put in Group A, and in fact it’s almost always a mix of people in A and B. You’re even welcome to say I’m interested in someone in Group C.”
The closed session is informational only. “I’m going to walk you through the candidates in group A, B and C,” he said. “I’m going to tell you everything that I know about them, including anything I’ve been able to uncover. . . You’re going to be able to ask me questions, informational only, for clarification.”
Once the board has all the information they need, they will move back into open session to deliberate. Each board member will have the opportunity to say which candidates they would like to interview, designated by code numbers to protect their identities. “Then someone makes a motion, and the board discusses,” Silveri said. “It’s an opportunity to lobby for certain candidates.”
Once a motion passes, the candidates who are selected for interviews are no longer confidential. There is no minimum or maximum number of people the board can choose, but Silveri said boards almost always select 4-6 candidates for first-round interviews.
The first round of interviews will be Jan. 3-5, right after the holiday break. (Dates may change, depending on the number of applicants the board actually decides to interview.)
Interviews are up to 90 minutes per candidate. “They can be pretty intense,” Silveri said. “They can be asked 21-24 questions. There’s an opportunity at the end for the candidate to ask questions of you [the board] and make closing remarks.” He strongly advised against scheduling any more than two interviews per night.
Although they are held in public, the only meeting candidates should attend is for their own interview. “Even on the night you deliberate, they know not to be at the meeting.”
(Members of the public will have the opportunity to fill out feedback forms after each interview, which will be given to the board to consider.)
After all the interviews, the board will meet again that Friday, Jan. 7, to discuss and select second-round candidates. Boards typically select two, sometimes three finalists, Silveri said.
These interviews will be on separate nights, Jan. 12 and 14. During the day the candidates will tour the district and meet with stakeholders (without board members present). The interviews will be shorter, 60 minutes, with an additional 15-minute presentation by the candidate.
The week of Jan. 17, a subcommittee of no more than three board members will visit each finalist’s current worksite where they can ask questions of stakeholders in those districts. Site visits usually last about 3 and a half hours.
Then the board will meet again, Jan. 25, to make a final selection and extend a job offer. They will have a two-week negotiation period before the regularly scheduled school board meeting Feb. 8, when the board could make a final approval to hire the candidate. The candidate might have an actual start date another two weeks out, Feb. 22 or so.
“Those last two dates in particular are very much approximations,” Silveri said. “The wild card is negotiations and contract. If you’re lucky, you might be able to make that happen quickly and move these dates even sooner.”
But mid-February is about the best they can hope for, given all the steps that need to happen, Silveri said.