Superintendent Terry Fralick will retire at the end of the school year.

 

The Jefferson-Lewis BOCES has been helping lead the search for his replacement.

Here's a letter the district released on the search, which is down to two people:

One of the most important decisions that a Board of Education will ever make is the recruitment and selection of a Superintendent of Schools. This decision will not only impact our faculty, staff, and students, but also our entire community. This is a responsibility that we as members of the Board of Education take very seriously.

Over the past several months the Board has embarked on a process to recruit a successor to Mr. Fralick. The Superintendent’s vacancy was advertised widely in professional journals and newsletters throughout New York State. At the close of the recruitment period seventeen (17) individuals had submitted letters of interest, resumes, and credentials for this position. Each member of the Board reviewed the application materials of each candidate. Following a discussion of each candidate’s credentials the Board selected five (5) individuals for personal interviews. These interviews were held on March 2 and 8, 2017.

At the conclusion of the initial interviews, the Board discussed their impressions of each candidate. As a result of this discussion, the Board has selected the following two (2) candidates to move on to the next step of the recruitment process:  Mrs. Patti LaBarr, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction – Watertown City School District  Dr. Ronel Cook, Deputy Superintendent – Poughkeepsie City School District During the next phase of the recruitment process, the Board will be seeking feedback from the school community regarding their impressions of the two (2) finalist candidates.

Second round stakeholder sessions have been scheduled for Thursday, March 30, 2017. Each candidate will be participating in a series of sessions with the district’s administrators, faculty, students, non-instructional staff, and community. At each of these sessions, participants will be able to ask the candidates whatever questions they would like to ask.

The members of the community will have an opportunity to meet each candidate at community interview sessions scheduled for 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on March 30.

The schedule for stakeholder sessions with community members, administrators, faculty, students, staff and noninstructional staff is printed below. It is important to note that the faculty, non-instructional staff, administrative staff and community sessions are open to all interested individuals from these groups. We encourage people to participate in these sessions and to bring questions you would like to ask the candidates so we can gather as much information as possible from the Watertown City School District Community. Each individual who elects to participate in the process will be invited to provide the Board with written comments regarding their impression of each candidate. These comments may be anonymous depending on the wishes of the author.

The Board will review the comments collected from each group and use this information in the final decision-making process.

The schedule for those meetings are in the picture above.

Please note that the applications of each candidate are available for review at the Watertown City School District website and the Jefferson-Lewis BOCES website www.boces.com. In closing, we’d like to emphasize that the members of the Board value your opinion and welcome your input. We hope you will all participate in the process and assist us in making this important decision.