Superintendent Search Firm Presents BOE With 11 Candidates

The announced Thursday a special work session to take place Monday, May 14, at which the board will review the applications submitted by the superintendent search firm Leadership Advantage earlier this week.

Although the meeting at Monday will technically begin as a public work session, business administrator Cheryl Balletto said the board is expected to adjourn immediately into private session and will not return to public session.

“The board is going to review all those applications [submitted by the search firm Monday],” Balletto said.

Rich Marasco of Leadership Advantage, which , presented the BOE with documents at Monday’s regular business meeting, including conducted earlier this year.

“We listed a summary of the candidate pool that we efforted to recruit for Fort Lee,” Marasco told the board, adding that the firm spoke with more than 20 people “who expressed some interest in the position.”

“At the end of the day, we were able to get applications from 13 individuals, and we’re providing to you tonight finals on 11 of those individuals, which we ask the board to consider,” Marasco said, emphasizing “the importance of confidentiality in this process.”

Moresco said that recruiting and hiring superintendents has become a “very, very difficult process, in this day and age,”—increasingly so because of the cap on superintendent salaries—but that his firm has conducted more than 80 searches in New Jersey and “20 or 30” in Bergen County.

“In many communities, superintendents are not making as much as principals, assistant superintendents, business administrators, which exacerbates the pool and process of hiring superintendents,” Marasco said. “So we want to emphasize to the board and the community in particular to be patient about this process, respect the confidentiality of the process because if you don’t, people are going to fold.”

He added, “No one wants to be part of a process by which their name gets out into the community when they are gainfully employed elsewhere.”

Marasco said the information he presented Monday could become public once the school board as the opportunity to review it, which they will do Monday, and the board attorney signs off on it.

“We suggest that at that time you do so,” Marasco said. “But certainly files in the interest of the people who have applied must remain confidential.”