Portland Public Schools may be close to picking a new superintendent.
It's been a private — even secretive — process, culminating in an intense week of interviews between the top contenders, board members and a group of community advisers.
If the goal is to keep names private and set the district up to pick the best possible candidate while maintaining every candidate's privacy, officials familiar with the process said it's working. For the first time in a decade, Oregon's largest district board is poised to choose a new permanent superintendent.
But public trust has been an issue at Oregon’s largest district since high levels of lead were found in school drinking water last year. The health hazards, and the district's defensive and disorganized handling of them, led to former Superintendent Carole Smith's early retirement and the ouster of other top officials.
PPS officials hope to remedy many of the district's facility problems with a likely bond measure this May, valued at over $700 million. They need voter support to get that approved.
Throughout the superintendent hiring process, the board has been trying to balance candidates’ privacy concerns with the public’s interest in knowing who might be hired.
Given the choice between privacy and publicity, Portland has kept the search private, with limited input from outside the school board.
The next step, likely by the end of this week, is for the school board to choose their preferred choice. Board chair Tom Koehler said the finalist would likely be given a contingent offer on Friday with the public waiting to learn of the choice until next week.
"I hope to finalize to one candidate and make a contingent offer pending satisfactory negotiation and after completing site visit," Koehler said.
The last stage has remained private and potentially grueling for the three semi-finalists.
On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week, Portland board members and a group of advisers put semi-finalists through six hours of interviews. That follows rounds of 90-minute interviews in previous weeks with a pool of five candidates.
In this week's semi-finalist interviews, the first two hours belonged to an advisory group the school board set up under the guidance of the executive search consultant it hired, Hazard
The 17-member group was created to represent community interests. But the group conducted its interviews in private, and its members were asked to sign confidentiality agreements to keep the process private.
The group's advice has gone through HYA to keep its lists of "strengths and weaknesses" for each candidate confidential. Koehler said those lists were not edited or changed by the consultant, and have helped inform the four-hour interviews the school board has conducted itself with each semi-finalist. Those, too, have been behind closed doors.
The board intends to have a public vetting period, likely next week after — announcing the finalist, but before the board’s hiring vote. Board members intend to visit the finalist’s current workplace during that time.
The Portland school board would likely vote to offer a final contract to the chosen finalist in the next week or two, assuming no major problems emerge after he or she becomes the finalist.
Scrutiny of Portland Public Schools’ hiring practices has intensified recently as several media outlets have found gaps in the vetting of certain administrators.
Copyright 2017 Oregon Public Broadcasting