D21 will hire internal interim super

“That was their guarantee to begin with,” he said.

The board had three highly qualified finalists, an announcement from the district said, but Nelson said not every board member was in agreement on a finalist.

And the one person that a majority of the board preferred, the board could not take the final step of visiting their home district to further vet them due to school shutdowns because of Covid-19, Nelson said.

Board members felt all three finalists were worthy, but they had different feelings about each of them, he said. The board unanimously decided at a March 19 meeting to pursue an interim superintendent.

“They just saw too many things that were in the way of making a decision and not everybody agreed with everybody else, so we decided, you know what? This has gotten so messed up by the whole environment that we’re in that just for stability we’re going to pick an interim superintendent,” Nelson said.

“We had discussed that possibility” of an interim superintendent earlier. “We rejected it. That’s why we carried out this whole thing, but we did have this discussion about using an interim maybe,” he said.

The board began the superintendent hire process late last summer. Focus groups in the fall helped determine the top qualifications sought in a new superintendent. Applications opened over the holidays, and three finalists were interviewed in March.

There are five employees working in the district who could apply for the interim superintendent position, Nelson said. The job application will go out this week, and applications are due at the end of April. The interim superintendent must be named by the end of June, when Superintendent Candy Armstrong retires.

Nelson added, “We also knew that we had candidates that were quite worthy of doing this on an interim basis, for one year, and then we decided we could conduct a new search in a year and we would include the interim choice that we made, and others that want to apply, and open up to the outside.”

The three finalists were Jose de Jesus Melendez, director of languages and equity for Franklin-Pierce Schools in Tacoma, Wash., Rich Polkinghorn, principal of Hood River Valley High School, and Dr. Dorie Vickery, an education consultant in Salem.

The press release from the school district said it was important to reopen the search to find additional candidates who better represent the strategic vision necessary to guide the district in meeting expectations of students, staff and community.