Search for East Valley’s new leader on hold

The search for a new leader for the East Valley School district was put on hold Tuesday.

After a series of meetings with school district staff and the community the past few weeks, the district’s board of directors decided it needs more time to consider options before filling the superintendent position left vacant in May by Michael Jones. The post is currently held by Interim Superintendent Christine Burgess, who has a one-year contract.

“Knowing there is a concern over the timeline (of the search), and that we recently have new information for the needs for our spring levy campaign, the board decided to put on hold the superintendent search,” said Board President June Sine.

The search was set to begin now, and end in mid-December.

The delay is due in part to potential conflicts with the district’s spring maintenance and operations levy.

“We are going to change our levy strategy a little bit, mainly because of absentee ballots,” Sine said.

The district needs more time than usual to get information out to voters because more than 50 percent of the district votes absentee. Information will need to go out at least two weeks earlier than anticipated, Sine said.

“The original timeline was to have (the search) finished by December, another option would have the search done by February, but either one would directly affect the involvement in our levy,” Sine said.

The same groups involved with helping on the levy campaign would also be involved in the search, overloading those people with tasks.

“When you are talking about commitment from community members, it just tends to be the same people, or a lot of the same people,” Sine said.

Also of concern was some opposition to the timeline of the search.

Originally, staff received a letter from the board indicating that the search would take place later in the school year, when superintendents are typically looking for work, said Leslee McLachlan, the East Valley Education Association president.

“Then (the board) changed their minds in August,” McLachlan said. “The common theme among staff has been that we want to wait until at least the beginning of the year, because that would be the best time to get the best pool of candidates.”

She said she was happy to hear that staff and community input were heard by the board.

“I’m guardedly optimistic,” McLachlan said. “We’ll see how it looks. I’m very glad they are taking time to really look at it.”

Sine said the board will decide within in the next two weeks how to proceed.