By Anthony Rifilato
Last June, former superintendent Dr. Robert Britto resigned after the board had looked to end his employment in the district, leaving after only two years at the helm of the district. The board said the agreement they reached with Britto was amicable, and pledged to fill the superintendent's position by July 2008.
In October, the board approved a $10,000 contract with School Leadership LLT, a New York City-based consulting firm that recently initiated the search for a new superintendent, which includes placing advertisements in the New York Times and recruiting experienced candidates, among other measures.
Currently, Dr. Thomas Caramore, a former superintendent at the Bellmore-Merrick Central School District, is serving as interim superintendent, and is expected to leave in 2008, after he finishes a one-year contract. Caramore was previously the Baldwin School District's interim assistant superintendent for human resources.
At its Dec. 12 meeting, the board said an advertisement for the position will run in the Times in late January for two weeks, and is expected to generate numerous applications in the coming months. School Leadership will then screen those resumes and move forward with the district to interview potential candidates for the job.
"We are looking for a new superintendent, with the expectation that someone will be hired by the summer," said School Board President James Scannell at the meeting. "As we go through the search process, we gathered information from the community."
That dialogue with residents was initiated at a special meeting at Baldwin High School on Nov. 27, where residents provided input to the board about what they wanted to see in a new superintendent.
Since Britto was relatively new to the district, Scannell said most of the specifications included in the ad for a new superintendent - based on previous community input following Dr. Kathy Weiss's retirement in 2005 - are still the same.
Those included that a candidate possess a history of leadership in a diverse community and school district, a record of strong instructional leadership and a capability of maintaining confidence in the district's schools, among other requirements.
But there have been slight changes to the criteria, Scannell said after the board meeting. "One of the suggestions was that we change the order a bit, which included a commitment to the schools and community," Scannell said, adding that such a specification would be made prominent in the ad. "The feedback [from the community input meeting] was positive. We worked around the idea that we already had a set of specifications that weren't that old, and there are a good set of recommendations that are based on community meetings we held a number of years ago."
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