The Higley Unified School District’s Governing Board has narrowed its search for the district’s next superintendent to five applicants who will receive first interviews.
The district is keeping applicant names confidential at this stage.
The district received 17 applications for the position. The chosen applicant will replace Sherry Richards, who is retiring at the end of the school year.
The district will conduct first interviews between Jan. 27-31. A round of second interviews will be held Feb. 10-14.
A public forum with the finalists will be held sometime in the last week of February with the board anticipating its selection at its March 4 meeting.
The district is conducting an in-house search this year after a failed search using a firm last year.
That search resulted in the selection of Nate Carman from the Socorro Independent School District in El Paso, Texas.
However, the board quickly had to withdraw the offer after Socorro placed Carman on administrative leave March 25 as an external forensics audit identified him as having a possible conflict of interest regarding district purchasing decisions.
Instead, the board elevated Richards, who was serving as interim superintendent, to the full-time superintendent for the year. Richards postponed her retirement to fill the void when Carman’s contract was rescinded.
Richards was associate superintendent when Dawn Foley resigned as superintendent in June 2023. The board then elevated Richards to interim while the first search was conducted.
We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X.
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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