The search for a new superintendent to steer the 7,000-student Bozeman School District narrowed Wednesday to three finalists after a fourth failed to show. Bozeman School Board trustees interviewed two candidates from large out-of-state faculty districts and one from a smaller Montana district.
The three finalists are Sarah Brown, fifty-four, who currently resigned as human resources director of the forty-eight,000-student Manatee County School District in Florida; Bob Connors, 56, modern superintendent of the 842-pupil Glasgow School District in northeast Montana; and Christopher Hines, 58, deputy superintendent of the 63,000-student Conroe School District in Texas.
Richard Schroeder, a former Illinois faculty administrator now working for an ebook publisher, was a no-show. Debra Silk of the Montana School Boards Association, assisting with the hunt, said she didn’t know why. Pat Strauss, human resources director, stated that no one from within the Bozeman School District implemented it.
It’s a tough task,” he stated.
The faculty board held an hour-long formal interview with every finalist at Bozeman High, asking a set list of questions about management styles, teaching students, and building community trust. Before that, finalists met informally at a reception with about 30 instructors, dads and moms, network members, and newshounds.
Sarah Brown earned her undergraduate diploma at Montana State University and told the board she believes in “collaboration, communique, and transparency.” She said she’d like to talk privately with trustees about some problems but instead spoke publicly after conferring with Andy Willett, faculty board chair, and Silk.
Brown defended her 4-12 months document in Manatee County colleges. The Bradenton Herald of Florida pronounced Tuesday on a critical document by a college superintendent affiliation, which observed that schools often considered her human assets branch as an “impediment.
Brown said the document is “complete of misleading statistics … not accurate … (and) sick-intended.” She said she had increased the instructor hiring rate in three years with the aid of 26%, accelerated teacher retention by 21%, gotten a college advantages gadget that became $nine million within the purple back into surplus and started job gala’s that efficiently employed more than 500 instructors. Brown said the vital report had been sought with the aid of an administrator who had changed into no longer her pal and had been investigated by using the Florida Department of Education for seven counts of unethical conduct.
Though most of her experience has been in human resources and larger districts, including the Los Angeles County Office of Education, Brown stated that she had worked carefully with teachers and directors on such problems as turning around failing schools, and they consider Bozeman “my network.
“Bozeman is on an exquisite route right now, and my activity could be to make certain we live that way,” Brown said. Bob Connors, a former University of Montana quarterback, was requested via a reporter about the cancers he has been combating for years. He stated in 2002, he had skin cancer that spread into his shoulder, causing him to lose using his left arm. Doctors had been “executed with me,” he stated. What stored him was an experimental immunotherapy drug trial in Portland, Oregon.
“I had a 3% threat of survival,” Connors stated. Now, “I’m absolutely cancer, unfastened.”
He stated he’s proud of Glasgow faculties beginning to undertake the professional studying network (PLC) model that promotes teachers taking part in higher methods to educate and is proud of passing an $18 million building bond. He stated that Bozeman can be a larger school district than Glasgow, but “the situations are equal.”
In training for 36 years, Christopher Hines has held one of the top jobs in a developing school district within the Houston location for eight years. Hines said the Bozeman job is “very attractive” because the network appears forward questioning, and he’s searching out new demanding situations. Hines, who described himself as pragmatic and smooth-spoken, said he’s “a large believer in tracking statistics” along with test scores to improve student fulfillment. He stated he’s not acquainted with Montana college regulations and legal guidelines.
However, “I’m a pretty brief learner. Asked about Bozeman’s transition to 2 excessive colleges, he stated the district had finished a very good job growing a “culture of excellence” for each school. The Bozeman School Board plans to maintain a unique meeting on June 18 to vote on whether to decide on either one of the three finalists or choose a period in-between superintendent for subsequent college years and carry out a new search.