Ocean City Board of Education should make choice known in September
OCEAN CITY — The Ocean City Board of Education is “moving into the final stages of the superintendent search.”
School Board President Chris Halliday provided that update at the Aug. 24 meeting.
“We’ve had the opportunity to interview a strong pool of experienced candidates to lead our district and are narrowing it to the final candidate,” he said.
“As we move into this final stage, we will continue to maintain confidentiality so we don’t cause any unnecessary hardships for any candidates.”
Halliday said they had 60 candidates in the overall pool, then narrowed it down and conducted the first round of interviews. There were six days of interviews total between the first and second rounds.
“We’re using rubrics to evaluate each candidate in their personal interviews,” he said after the meeting. “The whole board took part so each board member had rubrics for each candidate. We went through evaluation questions so a list of questions for each interview and each person was able to score and evaluate each candidate. We tallied them up, we had a discussion, and then we moved forward to the next round.
“We’re continuing to move forward.”
Halliday declined to disclose how many candidates are left at this point.
“We’re getting close, we’re getting close,” he said. “The goal is by the September board meeting that there will be news.”
The next meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21.
Dr. Scott McCartney is the interim superintendent of schools. He began his tenure this summer and is contracted through the end of December.
If the new superintendent comes on board in January 2024, the Ocean City School District will have had five different superintendents since 2021, including Dr. Kathleen Taylor, who retired that summer after 15 years with the district.
Ocean City had interim superintendent Dr. Thomas Baruffi for the 2021-22 school year, Dr. Matthew Friedman, who was hired in a three-year contract but stayed only for the 2022-23 school year before leaving for another job, and McCartney for the first half of the 2023-24 school year.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff