Kellogg School District moving closer to selecting new superintendent

UPDATE 4/17 -- Kellogg School District has narrowed their search after David Carson and Steven Miller withdrew their applications. This information was posted on the Kellogg Jt. School District 391 Facebook page on Tuesday morning.

KELLOGG — The word is out that the Kellogg School District has narrowed its search for a new superintendent down to four applicants.

This search began a few months ago following current superintendent Woody Woodford’s formal announcement of retirement, taking effect in July of this year.

During a special executive meeting last week, the KSD Board of Trustees met with Christine Donnell, a representative with the Idaho School Boards Association (ISBA), to review applications and come up with their finalists.

Donnell explained the process that both ISBA and KSD have to go through with one another, which includes gathering the applications and then reviewing them together to see which ones fits their needs the best.

“After the board looks at these applications and determines which are qualified and which are not, and there will definitely be some that are not qualified, they determine how many they want to forward on to the next phase,” Donnell said. “Next, I will go over the reference check protocol with the board, and anyone who has done any sort of hiring knows how important it is to do reference checks. We make sure that exactly what they said on their applications is what we are getting.”

After that message from Donnell, the board motioned to go into executive session and the official review process was underway.

Over four hours of review and deliberation later, the board went back into open session and announced that they had selected four individuals from the 13 submitted applications.

Those finalists include current Kellogg and Wallace School District curriculum director Nancy Larsen, David Carson, Steven Miller, and Lance Pearson.

Carson, Miller, and Pearson’s current positions and background are still being kept private as the board conducts their reference checks.

The board plans to use the information gathered through the reference checks and through the use of a recent social media survey to conduct formal interviews that will begin on April 26.

The Kellogg School Board will also be meeting at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 19, to discuss the results of the reference checks, both in executive session and then in open session immediately following. A Community Meet & Greet is scheduled to happen on April 26, following the interviews, an official schedule for that event is not yet set.

Partial results from the social media survey are available on both the Kellogg Jt. School District 391 and Shoshone News-Press Facebook pages.