The School Board called an emergency meeting for Friday evening revolving around the school district’s superintendent search.
The meeting will mostly be closed to the public, according to the agenda. School board members will enter executive session briefly after it begins at 6 p.m.
“We needed to make some decisions prior to next week, so we needed to have a meeting tonight,” said Mark Chrislip, School Board president.
Chrislip didn’t provide any other information about the contents of the meeting. He said it would be a “continuation of the candidate search.”
The School Board narrowed the candidates from 22 people to three finalists in a meeting that was closed to the public Tuesday evening. The finalists’ identities won’t be shared until next week, according to an email sent to district staff Thursday.
The email outlined more thoroughly the next steps through the search process to replace current Superintendent Steve Splichal, who has served in the role for seven years.
Two members of the Kansas Association of School Boards, Brian Jordan and Marcia Weseman, were present at the Tuesday meeting. Jordan and Weseman have been guiding the School Board through the search process.
Candidate interviews are set to take place April 28, 29 and 30. Chrislip said Friday morning the timeline was still accurate.
Each finalist will be in Eudora for a full work day for their interview. The finalist will tour the facility and district, meet with administrators and district directors and take part in a 30-minute community and staff interview.
The Board will pick a candidate after all of the interviews and begin negotiations, Eudora School District spokesman Mark Dodge wrote in the email to staff.
“Once an agreement has been made, a formal announcement will be made,” Dodge wrote.
The School Board will also meet with each finalist for a private, closed-to-the-public interview.
Finalists will be announced at 7 a.m. in an email to district staff on each date of the interview. Then, a social media post and announcement on the district website will go out at 8 a.m. those mornings to announce the candidates more publicly.
Video introductions will be emailed to staff mid-morning on the day of each candidate’s interview, according to the email. Those videos will be publicly available mid-afternoon. There was not a definitive time listed.
Community members and staff will meet with each finalist between 4 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. each interview date at Eudora High School. These sessions will be open to the public. People attending should take COVID-19 precautions, Chrislip said.
Reach reporter Nicole Asbury at [email protected].
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