Guidelines and timelines for selecting a new district superintendent will be on the agenda at a special called meeting of the Aiken County School Board at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
School Board members are expected to approve a selection committee and give members their charge, discuss timelines for the search and set up times and locations for public input at the meeting, to be at the District office at 1000 Brookhaven Drive. The deadline for candidates to submit applications for the superintendent position was April 30.
"Basically, the purpose of the meeting is to have the entire board sit down and look at the process at one time, come up with a consensus and go from there," said Rosemary English, chairman of the Board.
English said the board's goal is to find the best candidate and have him or her in place before Dr. Beth Everitt, the current superintendent, retires at the end of July. She said she expects the selection process to begin within the next few weeks.
"Tentatively, we're looking at getting the applications in and sorted somewhere by the middle of May and then, hopefully, from mid-May to the end of May, possibly coming up with finalists and then making a decision by early June," English said. "We think the process is going well, and we are very hopeful that we will get outstanding candidates for the superintendent's position."
English said she hopes residents will attend any scheduled community input meetings to express their opinions about what qualities they would like to see in a new superintendent.
The Board also has created a page on its Website for residents to offer their opinions at acps.schoolfusion.us/. To access the page, click on "Community input opportunity for Superintendent selection."
"We wanted to make it convenient for the residents of Aiken County to voice their input," English said.
Once all of the written applications postmarked April 30 have been received, the Student Centered Education Consulting Group, an outside firm that is handling the initial application process, will begin checking the applications for compliance and that the candidates are certified as superintendents or are capable of being certified as superintendents. The School Board hired the firm, made up of former South Carolina school superintendents and administrators, when discussions about the search process began in the winter.
"One of the reasons we chose to do it this way and let them handle it is because they, as far as checking on certification, have easy access through the state Department of Education to do that, and they understand the process; so they can vet that initial process for us," said Bill Burkhalter, attorney for the school district.
Burkhalter said he anticipates the Student Centered Education Consulting Group should complete the initial vetting process by mid-May, and the district will receive the applications from vetted candidates then.
"They might have the applications to me as soon as May 12," Burkhalter said. "I will keep them in the vault until the committee that will do the initial screening meets to keep them confidential."
An Aiken native, Larry Wood is a general assignment reporter. He started at the Aiken Standard in September 2014.