SCHOOL BOARD ISSUES STATEMENT ON INTERIM SUPERINTENDENT PROCESS AND TONIGHT'S SPECIAL MEETING

The Board of Education issued a statement explaining why tonight's special meeting is being held to choose an interim superintendent to help the transition from Superintendent John Ramos, who announced his resignation last month.

The statement does not reveal the name of the interim person, but it seeks to explain the process and says the name will be released prior to the meeting. Ramos, who has served two years of a five-year contracted agreement, is set to depart in August.

Tonight's meeting is set for 7 p.m. in the board meeting room, 525 Academy St.

See the statement below:

The Board of Education has noticed a late breaking public meeting for June 7th at 7:00pm.  During this meeting, we will vote on the approval of an interim Superintendent, whose name will be made public before the meeting. Unfortunately, due to approvals that had to be obtained and other issues inherent to the personnel processes, we needed to notice the meeting (in compliance with the Open Public Meetings Act) before we could make the full announcement of the appointment. 

The BOE will also meet in a closed-door Executive Session tomorrow at 6:30 to discuss Personnel matters, but no action will be taken in Executive Session.

In the statement released shortly after Dr. Ramos' made public his decision to retire, we communicated our hope to have an interim in place before the start of the 2017/18 school year to ensure that the opening of schools goes smoothly. Given the long lead time required to provide notice (often 60-90 days), we had to act with urgency to find the best possible candidate. In addition, there is a desire among the BOE to not lose traction on the important work we have started including on-going implementation of the Access & Equity policy and year one implementation of the Strategic Plan. We also desire time to develop and engage in the right process for hiring a permanent Superintendent. 

The search for an interim Superintendent, which is often extremely time sensitive, and the search for a permanent Superintendent are different process-wise.  The process we conducted this year to find our interim Superintended is the same process we used in 2014.

Our search for a permanent Superintendent will involve the full community of teaching staff, students, parents and other community members. The Board will walk through this process tomorrow night.  

We will share information with the full community about the interim candidate as soon as we are able. We hope that members of the community will be able to join us Wednesday, June 7th at 7:00pm despite the late notice.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Baker, Chris Sabin, Madhu Pai, Annemarie Maini

[Executive Committee of the Board of Education, South Orange Maplewood School District]