As of Tuesday, 20 applications for each principal position

December 16, 2011
by Christine Yeres

At Tuesday’s board of ed meeting, Lyn McKay announced that in the three days since having placed advertisements for the two principal positions for Roaring Brook Elementary School and Horace Greeley High School, she had received 20 applications for each.  UPDATE: As of December 21, the district had received 70 applications for the high school principal position, 95 for the elementary.

The ads appear in the New York Times and in Education Week.

McKay described the various stages and timing of the search.  Already she has begun to meet with parent-community member and teacher focus groups.  Board member Jeffrey Mester asked McKay how people who are unable to attend a search meeting could make their input known. “What kind of input are you looking for?” he asked McKay.  See the three questions, the same for both RB and HGHS principals, below:

Horace Greeley High School ~ Principal Search

We hope to enlist your help in establishing the requisite qualities, characteristics, and level of experience of our next principal of HGHS. Please take a moment to respond to the questions below.

Are you a. . .

• Parent/Community member
• Staff member
• Student

1) What are the strengths of Horace Greeley High School?

2) What are the issues, needs and concerns the new principal must deal with?

3) What are the desired characteristics and attributes the new principal should possess?

[Then click to submit the form.]

Find the HGHS form by clicking HERE; the RB form by clicking HERE.
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Candidates have until January 11 to apply. Board member Karen Visser noted that Scarsdale High School is also looking for a new principal.  She asked McKay whether that would affect CCSD’s search. Scarsdale will accept applications until the end of January, said McKay, by which time McKay will have begun the interview process, narrowing the applicant pool to eight-to-ten, then to three, for each school.

Then for each principal-search, a group composed of teachers, administrators, students, parents and community members—without Eric Byrne or McKay—will craft questions for the three candidates based on input from the small focus groups that are now meeting with McKay.  Each search group will then pose the same set of questions to each candidate, but will be permitted improvise follow-up questions.

Subsequently, McKay and Byrne will meet with each of the three candidates and walk through the two schools with them and discuss with the candidates what they have witnessed in their tours.

Board member Jeffrey Mester asked McKay whether, by that time, candidates’ names would be made public.  “Yes,” she responded, “unless there is a candidate who really needs the privacy.”

McKay said she expects to return to the board of ed to recommend principals for each school by early March, adding, “I’ve told each group that we’re not going to ‘settle.’ If we don’t feel, as a community, that we have not found the very best person, we can always go back out again if we need to.”
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Remaining focus group meetings

For Roaring Brook:

Parents/Community: Wednesday, January 4th from 7:30pm to 8:30pm in the Cafeteria
Students - To be announced

For HGHS:

Parents/Community: Thursday, January 5th from 7:30pm to 8:30pm in the Academic Commons
Students - TBD