Wake begins looking for a new school superintendent. It’s going to take some time.
The Wake County school board plans to hire the N.C. School Boards Association to lead the search to hire a new superintendent to replace Catty Moore.
Moore announced earlier this month that she will retire July 1, ending five years of service as superintendent. School board members tentatively agreed Tuesday to hire the School Boards Association as soon as its March 7 meeting in order to expedite the search.
Multiple board members cited NCSBA’s extensive track record helping Wake and other North Carolina school districts in conducting superintendent searches. Board members also pointed to how the NCSBA fee of $21,500 plus additional expenses that typically add up to $4,000-$6,000 is much less than what other firms would charge.
“I have every confidence in the North Carolina School Boards Association to do this,” said board member Lynn Edmonds. “It makes good fiscal sense. I believe very sincerely they will take it seriously.”
School board vice chair Chris Heagarty, who is also on the board of the NCSBA, recused himself from Tuesday’s contract discussion.
Wake will be searching for a new superintendent at the same time as the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system. This month, the CMS school board approved a $57,000 superintendent search contract with BWP and Associates, an Illinois-based firm, The Charlotte Observer reported.
Potential timeline
The NCSBA, which has helped Wake in the past with searches, laid out a possible timeline of five to six months to hire a superintendent.
▪ Advertise and recruit (6-8 weeks).
▪ Get stakeholder input, such as community and staff surveys and public comment at meetings (4-6 weeks).
▪ Process applications (1-2 weeks).
▪ School board reviews application materials (2 weeks).
▪ Initial interviews of applicants (2-3 weeks).
▪ Conduct due diligence of applicants (3 weeks).
▪ Conduct final interviews (1 week).
▪ Select superintendent and conduct contract negotiations before making public announcement (1 week).
If the new superintendent can’t start before Moore retires, the school board would pick an interim superintendent.
“As the Wake County Board of Education, we do have a big job ahead of us in finding the next leader of this district,” school board chair Lindsay Mahaffey said Tuesday.
Keep finalists secret?
Wake is expected to draw interest since it’s the largest school district in North Carolina and among the 15 largest in the country. But Sam Thorp, assistant legal counsel for NCSBA superintendent searches, warned that since 2020 there are fewer people applying for superintendent positions.
Thorp said NCSBA will not recommend which applicants to interview or to not consider.
School board member Tara Waters asked about inviting the three finalists in to meet the public before the decision is made.
Thorp said under state law that applicants are guaranteed the right to confidentiality. He said they’d lose out on some of the best candidates if they asked them to waive confidentiality.
In 2013, the school board publicly announced the names of the three finalists and invited them to speak to the public before Jim Merrill was ultimately hired.
But for the last search in 2018, the NC School Boards Association urged the district to keep the names of all applicants secret.
First meeting since announcement
Tuesday marked the first full board meeting since Moore publicly announced her retirement plans on Feb. 9.
Moore has worked in Wake since 1988, starting as a a French teacher at Enloe High School in Raleigh. She was deputy superintendent in charge of academics before becoming Wake County’s first Latina superintendent and first female superintendent in 2018.
“I make this decision with a heavy heart but with undeniable confidence in the WCPSS community moving forward,” Moore said in her Feb. 9 announcement.
Several school board members thanked Moore for her service.
“We are not looking for the next Superintendent Moore,” said board member Sam Hershey. “We are looking for someone else, someone unique and we’re not going to try to have them fill your shoes because that would be an impossible task.”
This story was originally published February 21, 2023 at 6:12 PM with the headline "Wake begins looking for a new school superintendent. It’s going to take some time.."
