HARTFORD — The School Board voted Wednesday to proceed with a search for a new superintendent with the goal of inking a contract by late March. 

The vote was 4-0 in favor of going forward. Board member Nancy Russell was absent.

The search is being conducted by Omaha, Neb.-based executive search firm McPherson & Jacobson. The fee for services was negotiated last year, with a contract for $9,800 plus expenses for the search, which may not exceed $16,375.

The board began a search last January, planning to hire a candidate for the 2024-25 school year while keeping then-superintendent Tom DeBalsi on in a consulting capacity for the final year of his contract. 

After pushback from district administrators, teachers and the public, and facing a difficult budget season, the search for a new superintendent was put on hold last March. The expectation was that DeBalsi would serve as superintendent for the 2024-25 school year. DeBalsi, however, resigned on June 30, and the board faced a firestorm of criticism over its decision to pay him a severance package worth more than $210,000. 

The board appointed Caty Sutton, previously Hartford's director of secondary curriculum, instruction and assessment, to serve as interim superintendent this year, with a salary of $160,000. She declined Thursday to answer whether she plans to apply for the permanent superintendent position. 

The Hartford superintendent position will be advertised from Jan. 6 to Feb. 5, 2025 at a variety of locations including the National Alliance of Black School Educators, The Association of Latino Administrators and  Superintendents, the American Association of School Administrators along with School Spring and other education employment sites, according to the calendar provided to the district by the search firm. 

One of the next steps in the process is for the board to create a search committee comprised of stakeholders. The committee will include two community members, two parents, three teachers, one student, two administrators, and a central office and staff representative. The board said Wednesday night that it will release information shortly on how to express interest in serving on the search committee.

Board Chairman Kevin “Coach” Christie said at Wednesday’s meeting that the board would like to revise the draft search schedule provided by McPherson & Jacobson to move the stakeholder committee’s role in the process forward. The move would give the committee the responsibility for the initial vetting of applicants and presenting a slate of candidates to the board. 

That sequence of events is “quite uncommon,” McPherson & Jacobson consultant Jon Gratto said by phone Thursday. It runs the risk, he said, that stakeholder groups might look for qualifications favorable to their own interests rather than the qualifications set by the board. 

Christie did not return requests for comment on Thursday. 

Gratto, who has conducted five superintendent searches in Vermont, said the pool of candidates for superintendent has been gradually diminishing in recent years as fewer people enter the field of education generally, and even fewer pursue administrative careers.

Hartford is not “markedly different than other districts” in terms of its ability to attract strong candidates, despite a tight housing market and recent conflict between the board and the community, Gratto said.

The search will likely yield somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 candidates, of which a “half dozen or so” would be particularly strong, Gratto said. 

 District social worker Carrie Russell is  the point of contact for the superintendent search, Sutton said. Russell can be reached at russellc@hartfordschools.net. 

Christina Dolan can be reached at  cdolan@vnews.com or 603-727-3208.