Alva Review-Courier -

In a special meeting Monday, the Alva Board of Education planned their search for a new school superintendent. Dr. Tim Argo gave the board plenty of notice that he is resigning effective June 30, 2024.

Board members Jane McDermott, Karen Koehn, Shane Hansen and Kevin Pingelton met with Stephanie Hyder from the Oklahoma State School Boards Association (OSSBA) to plan the superintendent search. Hyder said she’ll rely heavily on Terri Owen, district clerk, to provide her with information. For example, she wants to collect marketing materials about Alva and the area that would encourage someone to move their family here.

The board signed up with OSSBA for their basic package which includes building a customized search page on the OSSBA website to be shared with neighboring states and regional areas as well as on social media and COSA.

In a couple of weeks, the OSSBA will hold an open community survey to allow parents and members of the community to answer questions about priorities and what’s important in a superintendent.

Hyder said the board would need to figure out a timeline and decide how long to leave the search open. She said each school board member will have access to the account listing applicants for the Alva position so they can review and rank them. That way, they won’t be presented with a stack of applications all at once.

Once the application period is closed, the board will need to meet and come up with a list of three to five applicants to bring in for interviews. Hyder said OSSBA will communicate with applicants and coordinate the interviews.

McDermott asked if the OSSBA does background checks such as social media and OSBI. Hyder said those are offered for an extra fee. The checks are outsourced to a company and cost from $900 to $1200 per applicant. She recommended doing these checks when the number of candidates has been narrowed after the first interview and before the second.

McDermott, who is president of the board of regents for small colleges in the state, commented that they do personality profiling when considering new college presidents. She asked if this is available.

Hyder said OSSBA has looked at a variety of programs but hasn’t settled on one yet.

McDermott said this could be a deciding factor when it’s difficult to choose between two qualified candidates.

Hyder then described two additions to the basic OSSBA superintendent search package. One is communications. Once the board makes a decision, this package would include releasing the information to internal school staff followed by a press release. This is a cost of $750.

The other addition is hosting focus groups of staff or community members to discuss the superintendent search, take comments and answer questions. OSSBA’s role would be to act as a facilitator for these groups.

Koehn said the school and community have worked hard on strategic planning. She wants the process to be open. “I think focus groups are good,” she said.

Hyder said the cost for these is $1200 plus travel to hold four focus groups in one day. Board members discussed who should be involved in these groups. They listed school staff, administrators, students, community and parent leaders and the strategic planning groups.

Timeline

Everyone pulled out their phones to check calendars as Hyder discussed the timeline for the search process. She said OSSBA can have the job posting ready to open for applicants on the week of Nov. 6. She suggested closing the applications after six weeks, but that fell close to Christmas. Board members decided to close applications on Dec. 29.

Hyder said they need to plan for three to four special board meetings. The first will be an executive session to review applications. She suggested they allow for an hour and half meeting. After looking at all the evening scheduling problems, the board decided on Jan. 12 at noon.

Next will be an all-day special session to hold interviews with top candidates. That was set for Jan. 17. The second round of interviews would be Jan. 22 all day. However, if they decided to do the extra background screening, that would be moved to Feb. 1.

Hyder then asked board members to list the biggest strengths of the Alva school district and community. These included financial strength, good support staff and principals, excellent dedicated teachers, well-rounded extracurricular opportunities with award-winning programs, a very competitive salary package, great partnerships with Northwestern Oklahoma State University and Northwest Technology Center, a robust strategic plan in place, and a really strong education foundation that gives grants to teachers and student scholarships.

Asked what qualities they were looking for, board members discussed the need to continue Alva’s strong financial position and the likelihood of needing a bond issue for capital improvements. McDermont also mentioned focusing on improving academics.

All the board members agreed they want to add the communication package and the focus group package to the basic contract with OSSBA.

Hyder said she’ll communicate with Owen about the scheduling of the day for focus groups.

A video of the meeting may be viewed at http://www.AlvaReviewCourier.com.