BY MATTHEW E. MILLIKEN

mmilliken@heraldsun.com; 419-6684

DURHAM -- If the next superintendent of Durham's public school system wants to find an agenda, all he or she need do is look at a list of suggestions made by local residents and educators Tuesday night.

Continue the balanced literacy curriculum. Focus on exceptional children literacy. Help students who need to learn English. Have a positive school board. Continue quality staff development. Seek community input. Continue and expand partnerships with community organizations. Continue offering supports such as social workers and guidance counselors to students.

Of course, those were just some of the suggestions submitted by a group at table 12 at Tuesday's so-called kitchen table conversation. School board member Leigh Bordley, who spent part of her time with the group, came up with a few more as a reporter hovered.

Continue nurturing academically and intellectually gifted students, she said. And this: "I would hope that we continue to support our Tier 1 schools that have lower test scores."

Bordley left the table for a moment but returned bursting with excitement.

"OK, I thought of this on my own," she said. "Alternative small high schools."

These were a few of the ideas at table 11: Continue community collaborations. Continue working with the business council. Focus on all children's success. Include diverse students in advanced academics.

Tuesday's list-making exercise was hardly academic. The talk was part of a kitchen-table conversation arranged by the Durham school system for the express purpose of getting input on what qualities the next superintendent should have and what that person should do once in office.

The event started about two hours after the board voted to engage the North Carolina School Boards Association to handle a search for a successor to Superintendent Carl Harris, who will start a federal education job in one month.

All seven Durham school board members attended Tuesday's talk. It culminated with representatives from every table describing what the next schools chief should be like. In part, they said the new superintendent should:

- Have experience with an urban or diverse environment.

- Be an open communicator.

- Be comfortable hearing disagreement.

- Be "someone who is not addicted to testing."

- Develop talent with Durham schools.

- Have at least 10 years of experience in a district larger than Durham so this won't serve as on-the-job training.

- Be "a visionary who will trust the principals and educators in the school with leadership that is not top-down but bottom-up."

- Be someone who knows a second language.

As the meeting drew to a close, school board Chairwoman Minnie Forte-Brown said the comments made Tuesday would be shared with the N.C. School Boards Association. The association typically conducts Web-based employee and community surveys as part of its superintendent search service.