BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Louisiana’s top public school board has set a Feb. 28 deadline for anyone who wants to apply to be the state’s next superintendent of education.
The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education published an information packet online for interested applicants and hired a firm, Promise54, to help with the search and review of applications.
Longtime Superintendent of Education John White is stepping down from the job on March 11.
“This is an incredible opportunity for a leader in education to take the helm of the Louisiana Department of Education, build on our current momentum and become a champion for all our children and families,” board member Kira Orange Jones, who is leading the search committee, said in a statement.
The search committee will begin reviewing candidate information in March and hopes to recommend one to three applicants to the full board for consideration to be superintendent. Leaders of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Educations have said they hope to hire a new superintendent before Louisiana’s regular legislative session ends in early June, in time to submit their pick for Senate confirmation.
The search committee, Orange Jones said, “is committed to casting a wide recruiting net and facilitating an open and efficient selection process in order to attract the most competitive and diverse pool of applicants we can.”
Louisiana’s education superintendent oversees and sets policies governing more than 700,000 public school students across the state. White has been in the position since 2012. It will take a two-thirds vote of the 11-member education board to appoint a replacement.
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