Ron Cassie, The Examiner
2007-04-03 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

BALTIMORE -

Improving school safety is the most important issue the next schools chief must address, according to more than 2,100 students, parents, teachers, staff, business and community partners who responded to the Baltimore City school board’s CEO search survey.

In an interview Monday at school administration headquarters on North Avenue, school board chairman Brian Morris discussed the status of the ongoing recruitment process and presented data collected from the public questionnaires put forth by the board to include public input in the selection effort.

Charlene Boston’s contract as interim chief exectutive officer ends June 30, and Morris said the school board expects to announce its selection before the end of the school year.

The list of potential candidates, gathered by Proact Search Inc., the firm hired to lead the search, has narrowed from 10 to 12 applicants — none of whom the board has yet met, Morris said. The list of still-viable candidates is presumed to include Boston, who has said she would like to be considered for the job.

The candidates will be brought in over the next 45 days for interviews in front of the entire school board, Morris said, in an effort to whittle the pool to a final short list of three to five applicants. Morris said parent, union and other stakeholder groups will not be included as part of the interview process.

John Kuhnle, an education recruitment specialist with Korn/Ferry International, which has done searches for the universities of Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia, among its 400 to 500 collegiate-level searches, said limiting public exposure for candidates at this stage of the search is considered a best practice to protect the top candidates’ identities. Kuhnle did say, however, once the list is narrowed to a smaller group of three to five candidates, it is more likely — if the candidates agree — for representatives of various stakeholder groups to get a seat at the interview table.

Morris said he was “slightly surprised raising academic achievement wasn’t the No. 1 issue” on the public surveys, which are expected to be posted on the school system’s Web site Wednesday. He said, however, that the results “speak to the larger issue safe environments play in the academic achievement of students.”

Nearly half of the respondents (48.3 percent) listed “improving school safety” among the “three most pressing concerns or issues that will face the new chief executive officer.”

“Raising academic achievement for all students” was listed the second most (40 percent) of 17 categorized concerns by respondents as a top-three concern, followed by pursuing more school funding (33.4 percent), teacher recruitment and training (31.7), upgrading school facilities (28.3 percent), building stronger relationships between parents, teachers and staff (24.4 percent), and upgrading technology (20.7 percent).

rcassie@baltimoreexaminer.com