Lee school board advances three finalists to head district
The Lee County School Board effectively narrowed the field of contenders for the position of school superintendent during a committee session Monday.
Five semifinalists had been identified earlier this month. At a workshop meeting Monday, the board served notice that is has found three finalists to bring to town early next week for interviews.
There was no formal vote taken at the workshop meeting at which official votes are not generally taken.
A vote on choosing a new superintendent — or to start the search over if no candidate can win a majority of votes — could come as soon as Feb.1.
The board will bring the candidates to Lee County for a series of meetings and meet-the-public sessions, including one-on-one interviews with individual board members.
The candidates who will move on in the search include Christopher Bernier, chief of staff for schools in Clark County, Nevada; Randy Mahlerwein, assistant superintendent in Mesa, Arizona; and Michael Ramirez, who worked his way from school positions in Broward County to be deputy superintendent in the school district covering Denver.
From earlier: Lee school board picks five finalists for schools superintendent
Other school news: COVID-19 surge in Lee, Collier schools led to more than 1,000 teacher absences in one week
Read more: Lee County's Teacher of the Year is Allison Kerner of Harns Marsh Middle School
Christopher Bernier
Bernier received the highest score in advancing to the semifinalist round of candidates for appointment as the new superintendent of schools and retained that position when board consensus narrowed the field to three..
Currently he serves as chief of staff to the schools in Clark County, Nevada, where the biggest city is Las Vegas.
He refers to Clark County as the fifth-largest school district in the country. As chief of staff his job includes setting district goals by building consensus "among diverse internal and external stakeholders to lead and drive change."
In his own words: "I was blessed to have my brothers and sisters step upon the landmines of my parents' rules. It made it very easy for me to navigate the world. I had very clear examples. There are expert leaders in this school district who know where those sacred situations and those landmines are. It's important to have that."
Randy Mahlerwein
Currently assistant superintendent of the Mesa, Arizona, public schools, he oversees supervision of secondary schools and principals and previously supervised a feeder system for schools in the district.
His first teaching jobs date back to 1997 when he taught 7th- and 8th-grade math in Phoenix. He has been an adjunct faculty member at two colleges in Arizona.
He was second in the preference balloting by the school board, in which candidates were rated from zero to 4. Mahlerwein received 14 votes. He and Bernier were the only candidates to receive no zeros from board members.
In his own words: "I keep everybody informed in the moment so there is no surprise, never a blindside. I think it's about building a relationship based on open communication, a sense of urgency through communication."
Michael Ramirez
A native of New York City, his family moved to Florida when he was young. Ramirez has been deputy superintendent of schools in Denver since 2019, a school district that is 53% Latino, 25% white, and 13% African American and Black students.
His education career began after graduation from Southeastern College in Lakeland and spent four years as principal of Coral Glades High School. He was previously a social studies teacher and behavior specialist in Broward County. His career began as a social studies teacher and baseball head coach at Dade Christian School in Miami. He received
In his own words: "My story begins at home. I was born and raised by two incredible Puerto Rican parents. One educator, my math teacher, would not allow me to coast. It was her belief in me that gave me the confidence to know more and do more. It's inevitable that conflict is going to come ... first and foremost, it speaks to trust, trust from the community in the critical decisions in order to successfully resolve conflict."
Charlie 'Jeff' Perry
His experience includes 35 years in public school education, including the past five years as district superintendent of Hamblen County schools in Tennessee. He has also held superintendent positions at districts in Colorado and Virginia.
Perry's total in the straw ballot was 11 points, two fewer than needed to make the final three.
In his own words: "I have a very collaborative and collegial approach to leadership. I involve stakeholders in every decision that I make. I am very quick to give praise to others, and I am very quick to accept responsibility for anything that would happen."
Michael Gaal
Since 2018, Gaal has been involved in the private sector as president for sales of Beable Education of Lakewood, New Jersey The company has developed programs designed "to close the literacy and opportunity gap for all students."
Gaal has had positions with large urban school districts, including a year as deputy chancellor of the Washington, D.C., schools and chief of staff in Oakland and was with the Detroit school system in "turnaround of Detroit's lowest performing schools," he said.
Gaal was given 10 points, but earned the maximum total of 4 points from one member, whose name was not disclosed.
A graduate of the Air Force Academy, he has served as a deputy policy director for the Secretary of the Air Force and as a vice commander and senior adviser at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
In his own words: "You have to go on an active listening tour, an empathetic listening tour, and understand what the needs of the district are. All your candidates will come in with strong predispositions to what they believe the district needs, but coming and telling people what they need in a community that they've lived in their entire life, maybe for generations, is not the way to foster partnership and collaboration."
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Lee County School Board keeps 3 in hunt for superintendent