School board trustees had narrowed the choice for high school principal to just four candidates at the end of last week. School superintendent Louann Carlomagno was doing her due diligence, interviewing each candidate in turn and getting ready to begin site visits when the announcement came early Wednesday morning that, in fact, the search will continue.
A final candidate had been selected at the board/superintendent level interview. However, during the follow-up process that candidate withdrew for personal reasons.
“While it would have been optimal to have a candidate in place after this first round of interviews, it is much more important to have the absolute right candidate chosen as the next principal of Sonoma Valley High School,” said Carlomagno. “We are looking for a very specific skill set, as outlined in the Leadership Profile Report developed by our search firm, which includes a visionary leader who is an excellent collaborator, communicates well with all stakeholders, and who is able to improve student achievement at all levels.”
Carlomagno went on to say that the top candidate selected met all of the requirements in the specific skill set and that dropping to the second candidate in line didn’t meet the stringent criteria set up by the district, the board and stakeholders.
The district will be continue working with its search firm, Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, Ltd. (HYA) as they continue the search process and is looking to have the second round of interviews completed by early April.
Leading up to the selection of the final candidate, the potentials had been whittled to four from the original 29 following an exhaustive paper screening and interview process involving a small army of Sonoma stakeholders.
Eight candidates made it through the paper screening process and were subsequently interviewed by two separate panels of nine people each in an all-day session. After that, four candidates were brought before the school board, leading to the decision of the final candidate.
“Our Board of Trustees has made a commitment to the community to hire the absolute best candidate for the job. We will continue to work toward this goal until we are completely satisfied with the candidate that we have selected,” said Carlomagno. “We truly appreciate the work done by our community in identifying the key criteria we seek in the ideal candidate, and for the many hours spent by the screening and interviewing committees during the first phase of this process. As always, it will be our goal to keep the school and community informed regarding the search process.”
