The Lisbon and Springville School Boards selected Grundmeyer Leader Services to help in hiring the next superintendent for the Lisbon and Springville School Districts.
Dr. Trent Grundmeyer of Grundmeyer Leader Services helped set a timetable for the next steps for the superintendent search.
One of the first steps that will be happening is a survey of those within the district to specify what they feel should be looked for in the next superintendent. That survey will be open from Friday, Oct. 1, to Sunday, Oct. 10. The survey can be found at https://tinyurl.com/LisbonSpringvilleSuptSurvey starting Friday, Oct. 1.
That survey will feed into data that will be used along the search process of what qualities the public wants to see in the next leader.
Following the survey, the position will be open to those who want to apply from Oct. 21 through Nov. 28.
After that time frame, the board will review the candidate pool with a closed session meeting Wednesday, Dec. 1, at Springville School district. The board will hone all applications they receive down to a pool of five to seven candidates they want to meet for informal interviews.
Those informal interviews will be scheduled in another closed session meeting, scheduled for Jan. 5, 2022, at Lisbon. Grundmeyer said that the meeting being closed session was to protect those applicants from harm, because as part of the search would be background checks and social media checks on those applicants to make sure the boards are aware of everything they need to make a decision on hiring the school board choice.
Formal interviews with the final three candidates will be held by the hiring committees from both school district Jan. 26, 2022, with a final decision to be made in a joint meeting of the Lisbon and Springville School Boards that evening.
Grundmeyer said that all members of the hiring committees would provide their ratings and notes for the final three candidates to help the board determine who would be the best fit for a new superintendent.
“That’s why it’s important for your hiring committees to be robust and filled with different perspectives,” Grundmeyer said. “You should pick people in the communities whose perspective you really want to hear from to represent you on the committee, and get those names selected in the next few months.”
That information will get turned into data that Grundmeyer Leadership Services can help to highlight who the community liked and help the board make the decision on who to hire.
Grundmeyer said that Lisbon will be one of the first superintendents hired in 2022 with this timetable, with Keystone AEA being the only other search his firm has on the calendar currently, and that search will not be seeing applicants that would be competing with the Lisbon job.
A hiring is expected to be made by Feb. 1, 2022, for both districts.
During the work session between the two boards, Springville and Lisbon ironed out a few details in the hiring process for the next superintendent.
The two boards settled on a salary range of $145,000 to $165,000 for the position. Grundmeyer noted that for district’s the size of Springville and Lisbon, $147,186 was the average cost of a superintendent. The $165,000 portion of the scale would be for employees who have more experience.
The districts confirmed they would be looking at a two-year contract with a superintendent.
The board approved moving to a monthly stipend for mileage between the two districts capped at a fixed amount.
Grundmeyer asked both boards to review language in the current superintendent contract, and if anything needs to be amended or cleaned up, to do so between now and hiring the new superintendent, especially when it comes to if the sharing agreement between both districts were to end
Lisbon school board member Allan Mallie asked if in the past several years there had been any employees who backed out after an offer had been made.
Grundmeyer said that has happened to the firm four separate times in the last eight years, and that three of those were because of family not being as on board with the new job, and why it is important to involve families in that hiring decision as well.