Hearing airs qualifications sought in next Wake schools leader

RALEIGH -- He or she will need the financial acumen of Warren Buffett, the peacemaking savvy of Mahatma Gandhi and the educational expertise of Bill Friday.

Oh, and the person should really be from Wake County, too.

The public meeting Wednesday on the ideal qualifications for the next superintendent of Wake County schools brought forth a long wish list from the 30 or so people who turned out at school board headquarters on Wake Forest Road.

Two representatives from the firm Heidrick & Struggles, which is being paid more than $80,000 for the search, tried to make the meeting less formal and more of a dialogue by taking comments as they sat in chairs near the audience, instead of in the board's seats. But most speakers seemed set in their positions.

"I would like to have a superintendent that would help bring all our communities together," said Samuel Greene, a retired Wake County principal. "Right now, it's very split. If we have a 5-4 board, he is going to have to be almost a bouncing ball to get things done."

A post-diversity leader

Heidrick & Struggles is looking for a replacement for Del Burns, who resigned as superintendent after a new majority on the nine-member panel started to move away from a policy of balancing the percentage of students from low-income families from school to school.

Mostly familiar themes played out Wednesday between supporters of the current board's evolving plan for neighborhood schools and advocates of the previous board's emphasis on maintaining socioeconomic diversity in each school.

Vickie Adamson, a Wake schools parent who introduced herself as the former director of financial reporting for a Fortune 500 company, called the recent budget process in the schools system frightening.

"I see the school board spending money on all sorts of crazy stuff and it infuriates me," Adamson said. "A lot of the school board members have not been through a budget process, and they made a lot of mistakes."

Several speakers mentioned the school board majority's proposed rule change to allow someone without specific kinds of education background to lead the system. George Conway, a member of the Heidrick & Struggles search team, wanted to make clear that didn't mean the preferred candidate would necessarily be a non-educator.

'First place we'd look'

"We haven't been told to shift our focus away from educators, but to look broadly," Conway said. "There's no abandonment of people that have been successful in education; that's obviously the first place we'd look."

Some speakers insisted that it was important that a new superintendent have a deep background in Wake schools history.

"If this person doesn't understand who we are and who we have been ... it's going to be a very difficult thing," said Melanie Taylor, a retired teacher. On the other hand, retiree Paul Kretzschmar said, the new leader for the 140,000-student system should be in sync with the new board's direction.

"Being that we have shifted this way and are dealing with neighborhood schools and are getting away from the busing, I think we need someone who has some background in neighborhood schools," he said.