The search for a brand 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 3 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, become a no-show. Debra Silk of the Montana School Boards Association, who is assisting with the hunt, said she didn’t know why.
No one from within the Bozeman School District implemented, stated Pat Strauss, human resources director.
“It’s a totally difficult task,” he stated.
The faculty board held an hour-lengthy 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, dad and mom, network members and newshounds.
Sarah Brown, who earned her undergraduate diploma at Montana State University, told the board she believes in “collaboration, communique and transparency.” She said she’d like to talk privately with trustees about some problems, but after conferring with Andy Willett, faculty board chair, and Silk, she instead spoke publicly.
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 superintendents 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 21%, gotten a college advantages gadget that became $nine million within the purple back into surplus, and started job gala’s that efficiently employed extra than 500 instructors. Brown said the vital report had been sought with the aid of an administrator who changed into no longer her pal and who had been investigated by using the Florida Department of Education for seven counts of unethical conduct.
Though maximum of her enjoy has been in human resources, and in larger districts, together with the Los Angeles County Office of Education, Brown stated that she had laboured carefully with teachers and directors on such troubles as turning round failing schools, and he or she considers 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 most 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 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 on higher methods to educate and proud of passing an $18 million building bond. Bozeman can be a larger school district than Glasgow, he stated, but “the situations are the equal.”
Christopher Hines, in training 36 years, has held for eight years one of the top jobs in a developing school district within the Houston location. 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 fulfilment. He stated he’s now 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 June 18 to vote on both deciding on one of the three finalists, or choosing a period in-between superintendent for subsequent college yr and carrying out a new search.