June 8 update: Rapid timeline for superintendent search
6/9/2012
At yesterday's workshop, the Duval County School Board advanced the search for a new superintendent quite a bit.
First of all, they heard from Nancy Broner about the report she prepared outlining the feedback collected at a variety of stakeholder meetings that the board has been conducting. One is the Envisioning Committee (of which JPEF is a part), which includes students, teachers, administrators and community organizations. In addition, the board heard from a variety of focus groups that consisted of teachers, principals and administrative staff. You can read the full report here (as a web page) or here (as a PDF). It was striking how similar many of the themes were to the priorities that are beginning to emerge from the ONE by ONE conversations.
Later Friday, the board asked their contracted firm, McPherson & Jacobson, to conduct the search for a new superintendent on a rapid timeline. McPherson & Jacobsen provided two timeline options for the search and selection process to the board, a "short" one (as requested) and an extended one (typically recommended by the firm). The board discussed both and agreed to a modified short timeline, including option to extend deadlines if not enough satisfactory candidates are found (details of all timeline options below). Find a full superintendent search timeline here.
* Note: Above dates reflect what was discussed in meeting, missing dates were provided in materials not given to audience but all details should be publicly posted at http://macnjake.com/searches.php by Monday, June 11 (look under DCPS search listing for "Brochure")
** Note: If not enough satisfactory candidates received by July 23, board agreed to extend deadline and shift towards extended timeline.
Community meetings
While McPherson & Jacobson will begin posting the position next week, the board will begin scheduling four community input meetings on following dates: June 18, June 21, June 25, & June 26 (all at 6pm, locations TBD). We will keep you posted as soon as we hear the locations for these meetings.
McPherson & Jacobson will not have info from these meetings as they begin to post job & recruit for position but will be asked to incorporate it into their screening of candidates after it is available.
Compensation
The general consensus of the board was that the job will be advertised at or around the same salary that Superintendent Ed Pratt-Dannals receives, but they are willing to negotiate "within reason" to get right candidate. The board asked McPherson & Jacobson for ongoing guidance with helping them identify competitive offer vs. other comparable districts and relative to what top candidates would be looking for.