Lakeville School Board Selects Search Firm to Find Amoroso’s Replacement

School Exec Connect, an Illinois firm with heavy Minnesota ties, will be leading the search for a new superintendent for the Lakeville Area Public School District, it was announced this morning.

Lakeville’s School Board decided to go with School Exec Connect after interviewing two search firms, the other being BKB Associates, of Mankato, during a meeting yesterday.

Board chairwoman Judy Keliher said the School Board will vote on the firm’s contract at its next meeting on May 10 and begin having meetings about finding a new district leader thereafter.

“We felt (School Exec Connent) really seemed to connect with what we were envisioning the process to be,” Keliher said of the board’s decision. “It was almost like they knew what we were thinking as a board.”

in the wake of his retirement announcement last month, but Keliher said finding a qualified replacement is priority number one.

“We think, and so did both firms, that Lakeville will get a lot of viable candidates,” she said. “But for us, it’s important to see stability—not to have a revolving door—because that leads to the success of where our curriculum goes.”

All told, Amoroso is set to leave with more than $360,000 in compensation and benefits when he retires on June 30.

The decision to use a firm instead of an internal process when it was decided a Request for Proposal (RFP) to seek an outside consulting firm to conduct the search would be best.

School Exec Connect is currently conducting searches to find superintendent candidates for the Rochester and Duluth school districts. The firm also recently helped the Stillwater Area Public School District with their selection of Corey Lunn as the district’s new superintendent in April. School Exec Connect has also previously worked with Richfield, Wayzata, Anoka-Hennepin and Mankato in their superintendent search processes.

But the cost of using a firm could cost upwards of $17,000, which is what the Stillwater School District recently paid School Exec Connect to search for Lunn.

The unplanned expense will obviously cause additional budget considerations but it’s not yet known what the search might cost.

Last month, Board member Michelle Volk asked her colleagues why the board couldn’t do the search on its own.

Board member Kathy Lewis said that Lakeville “deserves the best superintendent we can possibly get,” and that the process of finding a high-quality candidate requires a “certain level of expertise” that only a qualified search firm could provide.

Keliher agreed.

“Search firms are networked much more differently than we could ever be,” said Keliher. “They would be able to tap into people we couldn’t reach.”

Lakeville Patch will have more on the story as it develops.