- April 18, 2024
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Flagler Schools Superintendent James Tager has announced plans to retire at the end of his contract on June 30 of this coming year, and School Board members are considering creating a community panel to evaluate applications for his successor.
The board began to discuss how it will proceed to search for its next superintendent during a workshop July 16, but then decided to save more detailed discussion until a meeting in August, because the topic had not been listed on the agenda for the July 16 workshop.
Board member Colleen Conklin had raised the subject toward the end of the workshop, asking if the board planned to discuss the matter or if it needed to be added formally to an agenda for a future meeting.
District attorney Kristy Gavin said the subject could be added to the agenda for the board’s upcoming workshop in August, and the board could then look at options like conducting a national search, securing the help of the Florida School Board Association, or involving the community.
“Those would be the items that we would need to look at as a first step,” Gavin said. She said she could gather information on the costs that would be associated with those options.
Board member Janet McDonald suggested creating a citizen panel, and board member Maria Barbosa agreed. Conklin suggested the panel should include representatives of various stakeholder groups.
McDonald proposed that when candidates selected by the panel meet with School Board members, those meetings should be one-on-one — without citizen observers. That would be a departure from the process the board used during Tager’s selection.
Tager agreed.
“The one-on-ones, if they’re truly one-on-one I think you’ll get a little bit of a better picture,” Tager said.
Board member Andy Dance was concerned about closed interviews from an “optics and transparency” standpoint.
Conklin noted that the district has, in the past, held meet-and-greet sessions in which members of the public can interact with candidates. But candidates, she said, had seemed disappointed that they didn’t get true one-on-one time with board members.
“They wanted to be really comfortable and open,” she said.
Board members decided to discuss the issue further at a special 2 p.m. meeting on June 6. The meeting will be held in Room 3 on the third floor of the Government Services Building on State Road 100.
Correction: This story has been corrected to reflect that Tager is retiring, not resigning.
