EVANSVILLE — Lori Young has good connections inside EVSC, which isn’t surprising since she’s the Evansville Teachers Association‘s president. But Young didn’t know Friday that EVSC is down to one candidate for superintendent.
The Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation board of trustees is negotiating with a single candidate to succeed Superintendent David Smith when he retires July 1 after 14 years in the job, according to Steve Horton, director of board services for the Indiana School Boards Association.
Horton, coordinator of EVSC’s national search for a successor to Smith, made the disclosure Friday morning.
“The EVSC school board is working through contract negotiations right now with a candidate that they believe will move into the spot as their next superintendent,” Horton told the Courier & Press.
Sixteen candidates in all applied for the job and the field is down to one “at this point,” Horton said cautiously.
“And it looks like everything is going to move forward as planned,” he said. “So there will be an announcement here in the near future.”
How soon in the near future?
One matter must be taken care of first, Horton said. State law requires that a recommended contract for a new superintendent be posted on EVSC’s website 10 days prior to a meeting at which the school board will hold a public hearing on the contract.
Public school board meetings are set for Monday and then May 12 and May 27. Board members have said since the search began that they would take action on the contract “at the appropriate meeting in May.”
“I spoke with the board and their attorney at the point that they were ready to move forward with an offer and the negotiations process, but one of the things I don’t have from them yet is a hearing date,” Horton said.
The school board has an executive session set for 4 p.m. Monday, before its public meeting. Among the listed purposes: “Receive information about and interview prospective employees.”
School board member Chris Kiefer said earlier this month that, “the target for this hearing is still sometime in early May.”
The school board has been cagey all along
As outlined on EVSC’s web page devoted to the search, candidate recruitment began Feb. 10 — Smith announced his looming departure on Jan. 13 — and ended at midnight March 16.
As they have said they would do all along, school board members and administration have played it close to the vest about their quest for Smith’s successor. Individuals who apply for the position may not want their interest in it known, members have said. Smith himself argued in January that the elected school board members would hurt EVSC’s chances to land a quality successor to him by discussing the search publicly.
They’ve been so cagey, in fact, that ETA President Young said Friday morning she had heard not a peep. Young said information about such a big decision typically leaks out one way or another.
Young hears things through back channels — “Rotary club, it can be school board members or teachers or what have you,” she said.
“But not this time around,” she said. “I have heard nothing from anybody.
“I have had Rotary Club members and teachers asking who I think the next superintendent is going to be because, apparently, they think I’m in the know. And I’m like, ‘I have no clue who it’s going to be.’ And I’ve heard nothing, either. I find that strange because usually by now someone who is in the know has released that information beforehand.”
Horton said that means school board members have done their job well.
“I couldn’t be happier from my perspective in the way the board has gone about its work,” the ISBA consultant said. “I think they’ve been very diligent and are very pleased with the decision that they’ve made.”
The superintendent opening “was advertised across the country, and we did indeed get applicants from outside of the state of Indiana — some strong applicants,” Horton said.
Horton declined to say whether the lone remaining candidate is internal or external.
“We had a good pool of candidates for (school board members) to consider,” he said. “The interview rounds, I think, went very well. I think the board did their work very well and have come together quite well in the process.”
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Who is going to be Evansville’s next superintendent?