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Eleven candidates seek RFSD superintendent post

Bobby MagillGlenwood Springs correspondent

Eleven candidates are vying to be the next superintendent of the Roaring Fork School District. The district announced Monday that a screening committee met Saturday and reviewed 11 applications. The application closing date was Feb. 23. The names of the candidates are confidential, and only the finalists’ names can be made public. The applications now will be pared down to a slate of three or four finalists, who will receive a reference check. The finalists will be announced at the March 8 school board meeting. That evening the board will also announce a community review process for the candidates. Meet-the-candidates open houses will take place March 20 and 21, times and locations to be announced. Current Superintendent Fred Wall is set to retire this summer. The superintendent search, which the Colorado Association of School Boards helped facilitate, received high interest as early as January, CASB special projects consultant Bob Cito said. But the final number of applicants was lower than expected, he said. “I would say that I would have liked to have seen a few more candidates,” he said. “The pools are generally shrinking [statewide]. Our pools of a few years ago that would have had larger numbers, all have smaller numbers.”After much furor last year about the possibility that the school board would not take the superintendent search nationwide, it turns out that most of the candidates are from outside Colorado. Cito said Indiana, South Carolina and Utah each produced one candidate, while two are from Oklahoma and two are from Ohio.He would not say how many, if any, of the candidates from Colorado are from within the district. Saturday’s candidate screening involved RFSD staff and Roaring Fork Valley residents, Cito said. “They were very focused,” he said. “They were very honest in their appraisal of the candidates. The process, the exchange between the individuals that participated, was well-focused, [and their comments were] well-thought-out. They really took a healthy interest in what was best for youngsters in the school district.”

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