The Palo Alto High School community is gearing up for the extensive course by which the district will choose Paly’s new principal after the assistant superintendent explained the principal selection process at a Parent Teacher Student Association meeting on Thursday.
According to Assistant Superintendent Scott Bowers, the superintendent will select the new principal using input from a committee consisting of students, parents and staff, called the Principal Selection Input Committee. The input generated by this group will help choose the replacement for current principal Jacqueline McEvoy, who resigned in January due to personal reasons.
The first step in selecting the new principal is creating the PSIC, according to Bowers, who said that the PSIC would begin interviewing potential candidates for the principalship April 9.
Bowers said that 10 or 11 candidates have already applied for the position and that the candidates range in experience level.
“Some of those applicants are going to be well-qualified,” Bowers said. “Some of them are going to be assistant principals who think they’re ready for a principalship. Some of them might not even be assistant principals yet…but they want a shot at it.”
The interviews conducted by the PSIC will be 45 minutes long and will include 10 scripted questions set by the committee to give the candidates a fair chance to show their abilities.
“The first interview the candidate has really is an equal opportunity to show what they can do,” Bowers said.
After this initial interview, a second interview round will commence within a few days, at which time the best candidates will have their references checked by the district.
The PSIC will then discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these finalists in a debriefing with Superintendent Kevin Skelly, whose target dates for recommending a new principal to the School Board are April 27 or May 11.
Bowers said the PSIC interviews and the debriefing with Skelly are important steps in the selection process because they help the committee refine the search to a few candidates.
“People come out of the room feeling, with a consensus, that these are the people that we’re comfortable with bringing their names forward,” Bowers said.