The Dothan Board of Education has walked back its requirement that the incoming superintendent has previous superintendent experience, voting to change the language to “superintendent experience preferred.”
However, the requirement for a doctorate degree is currently staying in place.
D1 Brenda Guilford proposed the adjustment to the superintendent experience requirement, as she was one of the yea votes in the initial proposal.
Toward the beginning of discussion, Chairman Scott Childers asked the roomful of attendees if they were in favor of the new requirements; the “nays” had it, a larger group of people raising their hands in opposition to the requirements.
D4 Brett Strickland proposed using an outside hiring firm to find a superintendent candidate, but D6 Aurie Jenkins pushed back against the matter, saying an outside firm would not necessarily know what is best for Dothan City Schools.
Strickland said hiring an outside firm may have its costs, but it would take a burden off the board.
Childers pushed back: “I don’t need my burden lessened.”
Jenkins said she believed the job of hiring a superintendent should fall on the board’s shoulders, so they can hire someone with longevity.
She said she had seen examples of outside hiring firms recommending superintendents who had been fired from their previous jobs or some using their new position as a launching-off point to spend a couple years at before getting another job.
Strickland said there would be cost either way: if they hired someone from the outside to recommend candidates, or if they searched for those candidates themselves.
Childers noted that in the past, when dealing with a split board and being so close to elections, the board had to kick the can down the road.
D5 Amy Bonds, who will not be running again unlike her colleagues on the board, said she would feel better if the board who actually had to work with the superintendent got to make the decision on who would take up the mantle.
“It might not be some of us, so how could that be our decision to make?” she said. “I just think it’s only fair to let the elections happen and then let them make that decision.”
Childers said he worried a good candidate would see the conflict within the board and be dissuaded from the job.
“I don’t see another candidate being interested, and I don’t see us in a good situation for them to take this job.”‘
