District sets deadline for Superintendent search

The Socorro School board unanimously approved a timeline for its superintendent search, which will lead to the hiring of a new superintendent by December 16.

Sharon Sessions, school board member, announced at their October 21 meeting that the superintendent position had been posted to local and state-wide newspapers and school associations of superintendents and executives.

“Today is the day that we can choose to approve the timeline and the procedures and moving forward, what that would look like is we have a pretty aggressive schedule where the application deadline for the superintendent position would be November 6, that being the postmark deadline,” Sessions said.

On November 13, the school board will have a Zoom work session where candidates will be introduced, and the next day, on November 14, a meet and greet will be held at the GRADS building from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Sessions said the public will be invited to the meet and greet, where food and beverages will be provided.

On November 21, a Zoom meeting is scheduled with a committee comprised of two administrators, one certified staff member, one classified staff member, two district parents, one community member and one union officer. The board vice president will conduct interviews with each candidate. The committee will then offer its recommendation to the school board.

“We are anticipating more than 10 (applicants). The purpose of this first one will be for them to be able to weed it down, so to speak, and to present a certain number of finalists,” Superintendent Aubrey Tucker said.

At the school board’s regular meeting on December 2, an executive session to select finalists and schedule final interviews will be on the agenda. The interviews with finalists will be conducted on December 9, with the plan to announce and approve the appointment of a new superintendent on December 16.

Tucker offered the board his personal recommendations on selecting a new superintendent.

“There are people out there in education that are extremely knowledgeable, but do they know their craft? And when I say that, a lot of people gain a tremendous amount of knowledge, but they don’t know their craft in order and how to articulate it properly, not only to students, to the people that they’re going to supervise, but to the public. Having a great deal of knowledge and not being able to articulate it is worthless, and it will cause problems with you, with everyone here, with the public, the students in the process of education go deeper than just the knowledge,” Tucker said.

Dave Hicks, school board president, said that if they don’t find someone within the time frame, they will continue searching and try again in January.

“We want to make sure we get the right fit for this community,” Hicks said.