Superintendent search: Asheville school board selects firm, $30K cost with July 1 goal
ASHEVILLE - In its search for the district's seventh leader since 2013, Asheville City Board of Education has selected a firm to carry out the task.
Asheville-based Summit Search Solutions Inc. was unanimously chosen from a pool of seven applicants on Feb. 13, with the proposals weeded down to three at the school board's Feb. 6 work session.
In addition to Summit, under consideration were Nebraska-based McPherson and Jacobson and the North Carolina School Boards Association.
Chair George Sieburg and Vice Chair Amy Ray interviewed the three firms in the last week, and ultimately recommended the board proceed with Summit.
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“At the end of the day, what convinced me was the services, the amount of work that they are prepared to do, the expertise that they can bring our district," Ray said.
Summit's 13-page proposal to the board identifies itself as a "boutique" search firm that specializes in education. Their consultants have specialized in the education realm since 2001, and collectively the team has led 1,000 searches in the sector, including multiple searches in North Carolina.
Headquartered in Asheville, the application noted some employees have children in the school system and are "vested in the district's success."
The comprehensive proposal provides full service to ACS during the entire process — including community conversations, prospect research, outreach/recruiting, assessment, candidate profiling, candidate management, search process management, as well as comprehensive reference and background checking and offer negotiation.
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Ray said the board had assurance that ACS would be their only search this spring. The senior consultants assigned to the district are Todd LoFrese and Arasi Adkins, who live in Carrboro and Greensboro, respectively.
"They stood out above the rest," Sieburg said, and noted that Summit came to the interview already with recommendations: that the deadline for superintendent applications be extended from March 1 to mid-March, and that the application requirements themselves be pared down, with some of the questions instead emphasized during the first round of interviews.
Even with those changes, Sieburg said they are confident they can still meet the intended July 1 start date for a new superintendent.
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Of the three boards, Ray acknowledged that Summit was the priciest, with a fixed project fee of $35,000, but said during conversations they were willing to lower the cost "significantly."
Spokesperson Dillon Huffman confirmed Summit would lower the project fee to $30,000.
This does not include any additional costs accrued, such as advertising and posting fees, approximately $2,000 to $2,500, and background checks.
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'Revolving door'
Mid-discussion, the board called a recess to confirm a final detail: What if the search goes wrong?
Included in the proposal was a one-year guarantee dictating if the chosen candidate leaves the role for any reason within a 12-month window from the time hired, Summit will repeat the search one time on an expenses-only basis, meaning no $30,000 project fee required.
Board member Liza Kelly asked if they could seek a two-year guarantee.
“I want to acknowledge we’ve had a revolving door of superintendents, and I don’t want to go down that path again,” she said.
Rather than delay the vote, the board called recess, Sieburg called the project team, and by the end of the night's meeting they had a response: Summit was willing to do a guarantee for the second year if the selected candidate was terminated or resigned based on performance-related issues within two years of their hire. For the first year, the guarantee remained if the candidate left for any reason.
Was the board required to choose a firm?
There was also the option to move forward with the search without hiring a firm, as the board did in 2019, when the legal team facilitated the hiring process. From that search, former Superintendent Gene Freeman was selected.
Freeman left two years into his four-year contract, taking with him a $94,000 buyout, about $23,500 more than he would have made in his final 5 1/2 months had he stayed in the job.
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Interim Superintendent Jim Causby has served since June after Freeman's early departure.
The search for a new superintendent was named as a top priority by nearly all candidates running for school board in November. For the first time, the Asheville school board has elected members, with four of its seven members decided by nonpartisan vote in the general election.
The board's newest member, Jesse Warren, was appointed by City Council in January.
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Community input sessions
The school board has scheduled seven community input forum listening sessions to help guide the search, according to a Feb. 6 email from Huffman:
Feb. 16 at Ira B. Jones Elementary: 6 p.m.
Feb. 20 Virtual Option: 4 p.m.
Feb. 21 at Asheville Middle School: 5:30 p.m.
Feb. 22 at Hall Fletcher Elementary: 10:30 a.m.
Feb. 23 at The Arthur R. Edington Center: 6 p.m.
Feb. 27 Isaac Dickson Elementary: 8:15 a.m.
March 1 at Asheville High/SILSA: 6 p.m.
Sarah Honosky is the city government reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. News Tips? Email shonosky@citizentimes.com or message on Twitter at @slhonosky.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Asheville school board selects firm to take on superintendent search
