By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The search for the next superintendent in the St. Joseph School District is moving into the next phase as the school board seeks input from the community.
With a search firm hired, the St. Joseph School District put out an online survey earlier this month to get input from community members on the next superintendent.
And now with that survey complete, officials will seek additional input during community input sessions next week.
School board President LaTonya Williams says these input sessions will go over the results of the community survey.
"So, it's not like a blind meeting where you go out and you say these are our ideas, because in all honesty the time to do that was at the surveys," Williams tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post
Williams calls these input sessions step number two of the process, to review and expand upon the results of the online survey.
Williams says during these sessions she hopes to hear the ideas of community members, and not just on the credentials, but on the person
"Because a lot of times, school districts or organizations will just choose their new leader among their board, but this is a unique opportunity to where everyone in the community is able to be as involved as they would like to be," Williams explains.
The idea of gathering input from the community was built off of the successful Vision Forward campaign.
Williams says citizens should have a say in what qualities they would like to see in who is leading their school district
"And the Vision Forward process was an extremely good model in order to be able to try out the different ideas about community engagement and the methods," Williams says.
On Wednesday October 2nd, input sessions will be held at Spring Garden Middle School from 4 to 5pm, Bode Middle School from 5:30 to 6:30pm, and at Robidoux Middle School from 7 to 8pm.