The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville) by Denise Amos
April 20, 2018
Duval’s School Board on Monday is expected to receive a list of superintendent applicants and a search firm’s recommendations for which ones are the strongest candidates for the job.
That will kick off a series of public meetings this month and next, including meetings involving a 25-member focus group of community members, parents and school employees that will help the School Board evaluate and select finalists for the top job in the 128,000-student district.
Along with the public meetings, individual board members are scheduled to have a series of private, one-on-one meetings Sunday with the search firm.
Board members said Friday that those meetings don’t have to be held in public because Florida law allows for private meetings if only one board member attends at a time.
Board Chairwoman Paula Wright said that the search firm, Hazard Young Attea & Associates, had requested to meet individually with each board member before Monday’s meeting. She said she was unsure about what each meeting entails, but previous Duval school boards have had similar meetings with superintendent search firms before hiring a superintendent.
“This is a normal step in the process,” she said. “It’s no different than it was last time.”
The board is also scheduled to have one-on-one meetings with semifinalists for the job on May 11. Those meetings also are likely to be closed, although they’ll be followed the next day by public meetings with the candidates, said Tracy Pierce, Duval schools chief of public relations and marketing.
“It’s not only one-on-one conversations happening,” he said. “This is happening in the context of a lot of public interviews and conversations with the candidates.”