Help the School Board Choose New Superintendent

— from the Orcas Island School Board —

[On] March 18th, the School Board voted to invite three candidates to interview for the position of Superintendent.

The candidates are: Russell Pickett (WA), Jane Babcock (IOWA), and Eric Webb (OKLAHOMA). All have extensive experience in public education, and all are Superintendents. You will find their resumes attached here as well.

Candidates will visit the district as follows:

Russell Pickett Wednesday, March 26th
Eric Webb Monday, March 31st
Jane Babcock: Tuesday, April 1st

[Click through to yesterday’s article: orcasissues.com/school-supt-candidates-coming for a schedule] as to how those days will play out.

The Board is looking to receive feedback from you about candidates. There will be two opportunities for you to meet and ask questions of each potential superintendent:

1) From 12:15 to 1 p.m., there will be a Brown Bag Community Lunch on each day. Bring a lunch and meet the candidates. The lunch will be in the Home Ec room in the Middle School, next to the cafeteria.

2) There will be a Community Forum on each of the days above from 6-7:30 p.m. Childcare will be provided at the Funhouse Commons. Please call Cathy in the District office to confirm childcare (376-1500 ext. “0”)

Even if you don’t have specific question, your feedback is important to us. Just by observing the candidate(s) at these two meetings, you will get a sense of them. To that end, a “FEEDBACK” form will be provided at each forum. We don’t want to have a ranking of the candidates; we want to hear your impressions of them.

Finally, the Board will be meeting in Executive Session on April 2 to discuss the candidates, your feedback, and our observations as well. From the meeting, we will then come out into an open meeting to discuss and vote on which person to whom we’d like to make an offer.

We are excited about all of the candidates, and we look forward to reading your feedback.