Board to map search details

• By CHARLES LUSSIER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Oct 12, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:00 a.m.

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Now that the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board has selected a search firm, President Jerry Arbour has scheduled an initial meeting on Oct. 29 with firm representatives to hash out how this search will proceed.

Charlotte Placide, superintendent for the past four years, is retiring in June.

Arbour, in an interview Friday, said representatives with the search firm Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates offered only two days in the next couple of weeks for meetings in Baton Rouge, and Arbour said he chose Oct. 29 as the better of the two dates.

“We’re going to have to set some timelines and get some things down on paper,” Arbour said.

Another important decision will be the salary range that the School Board is willing to pay for Placide’s successor. Placide now makes about $214,100 a year. Arbour said he’s not sure whether the board will tackle that Oct. 29 or at a later meeting.

One thing the board won’t address that night, Arbour said, would be coming up with a profile of what kind of superintendent the board wants. Search firm representatives say that profile is a critical guide for them as they try to recruit candidates.

Arbour said the board will schedule one or more gatherings in the future where representatives of various community groups may offer their ideas of what kind of superintendent should succeed Placide.

At a Sept. 18 School Board meeting, Adam Knapp, president and chief executive officer of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, urged the board to locate a new superintendent quickly, even as early as January, so that Placide’s successor can start learning the new job quickly.

“I don’t think it’s going to be that quick,” Arbour said Friday. “That’s going to be one of the issues we’re going to discuss.”

Hazard, Young & Attea handled the 2004 search that led to the hiring of Placide. Firm representatives warned at the time that a more rapidly paced search would limit the pool of applicants.

The School Board at the time rejected that advice and had the firm try to locate a candidate who could start at mid-year. The firm’s three finalists, however, were deemed lacking and rejected by the board.

Instead, the board, in an apparently spontaneous move, opted to promote Placide, who had withdrawn her candidacy at the 11th hour.

Placide was the first superintendent drawn from within the school system in more than two decades. She had served for years as the chief financial officer for the system.