by Janelle Von Pinnon – news@thenewsleaders.com
The St. Cloud Area School District 742 School Board will conduct Community At-Large meetings with each of three prospective superintendent candidates from 5-5:45 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, Feb. 25-27 (one candidate each day) at the District 742 Administrative Office in the Apollo High School Resource Center (enter doors 2, 19 or 35), 1000 N. 44th Ave., St. Cloud.
Each of those evenings, the board will then take the prospective candidate to dinner at 6 p.m. at Cafe Renaissance, Waite Park, and then conduct a candidate interview at 7:30 p.m. back at the district office.
On Wednesday, Feb. 27, a special school board meeting to narrow the candidate choice to one will take place at 8:45 p.m. again in the district office.
The board had already conducted candidate interviews this past Tuesday-Thursday to narrow the superintendent search from a field of seven candidates down to the final three. One of the seven is former Kennedy Community School Principal Diane Moeller, who is currently interim director of curriculum instruction and assessement for the St. Cloud school district.
The seven candidates are as follows: Nettie Collins-Hart, a fifth-year superintendent in Forest Park, Ill. (5,000 students); John Engelking, a superintendent for the Proctor (Minn.) School District (1,800 students); Rick Mills, CEO of the Minneapolis School District (34,000 students); Moeller; Willie Jett, assistant superintendent for the St. Paul School District (40,000 students); Michael Funk, superintendent of Albert Lea, Minn. (3,200 students); and Lolli Haws, instructional superintendent for the District of Columbia School District (43,000 students).
The St. Cloud School District currently enrolls nearly 9,500 students. The board is replacing Bruce Watkins, who served as superintendent from November 2004 to June 2008, then was rehired as superintendent in 2010 and will retire June 30.
The three finalists’ names were not available as of press time Wednesday.
