December winds down, superintendent search proceeds

Christmas is next week, a time to celebrate our Lord’s birth once again and spend some down time with family and friends. I don’t know about you, but it seems life gets busier and busier in December—school semesters are ending, church and school programs are scheduled, business owners are making sure their financials are in order and Congress is impeaching a president!
    I’m not going to address the latter much, but it seems the House is determined to get President Trump impeached right along their timelines—before Christmas so as not to interfere with the upcoming Democratic primaries.
    On to other things.
    It’s safe to say residents here believe it’s been a tough year—for agriculture, for city/county relations, for our hospital and our school.
    As one who covers many school events, including the monthly board meetings, it seems things are turning around at Chase County Schools. I spend a lot of time in the building, and there is a noticeable change in the air as the first semester winds down. Much of that is due to our interim superintendent Larry Lambert, who stepped into the job the last week of October to finish out the 2019-20 school year.
    December generally is when the board starts the evaluation of the superintendent. This year, board members are also, once again, spending time on a superintendent search. But one thing’s changed after dealing with superintendent hirings through professional firms the past decade—board members are narrowing the search themselves.
    This is the way to do it. Who knows our community better than the people who live here? As board members discussed how to go about the search this time, it came up that sometimes candidates may not even apply if a certain professional firm was handling the search, one that may have bounced them from the finalists’ list in another school’s superintendent job for which he or she applied.
    Some patrons I visited with even suggested board members should spend the money going to the communities of the finalists and talk to the people there about their former school official. Spend the money that way instead of with a professional firm.
    The new year, maybe even by January, will see a hiring of CCS’s next superintendent. His or her hiring is important—it will set the tone on how our school operates.
    Merry Christmas!