CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In less than a month, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools will announce its next superintendent.
This comes more than a year after the district fired its last full-time superintendent, Earnest Winston.
Winston came up from within the CMS ranks and the community never got a chance to weigh in on his candidacy before he got the job.
The next person to fill the job will also bypass community scrutiny before being hired.
The last time that CMS publicly shared who would be the finalist for the superintendent position was in 2012 and they hired Heath Morrison.
They held public sessions, where the community had the chance to ask questions of the top three finalists, one of whom was Morrison.
In 2023, CMS is keeping its finalists private. It's part of a national trend that experts say is for the better.
"Pre-COVID, it would not be uncommon for a meet and greet the candidates, said Bill Adams, the vice president of Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, a national superintendent search firm. "It wouldn't be uncommon for interviews with the candidates that would be public, at the end. Post-COVID, we're seeing much, much less of that."
Adams said that this approach leads to a stronger candidate pool. One reason is that some qualified candidates don’t want to ruffle feathers in their current jobs.
"It's sometimes looked at, like a spouse cheating on a spouse," Adams said.
Summer Nunn, the chair of the CMS Search Committee, said almost 40 candidates applied for the job. A number the district is sure would be lower if candidates were revealed ahead of time.
"We really were able to go after the top talent," Nunn said. "And that was very important to some of the top talent out there, that it would be confidential that way, you know, whether or not they got chosen or if they didn't, they wouldn't have to expose that information to their current school system."
But, there are drawbacks to this approach, due to CMS's history of turnover in superintendent candidates. Some critics want to have stronger input on the front end.
"It's important for stakeholders to have a voice across the board," Adams said.
In 2017, when the district hired Clayton Wilcox, they didn’t announce who he was until after he was hired. With Wilcox’s search and this search, the district got community feedback ahead of finding the finalists.
The community feedback has been extensive. CMS gathered community surveys from multiple organizations and held both in-person and virtual feedback sessions.
"We did like a two-day blitz, and over a few thousand members of the community gave feedback," Nunn said. "And we built our leadership profile based on that feedback, and what the role of the superintendent is alongside the board.
Nunn said it directly guided what was posted to the applicants and applicants knew what they were looking for.
The district released this leadership profile for the next superintendent.
"It's much better to do it on the front end and listen to stakeholders on that front end," Adams said. "And then on the back end, when you actually get the candidates, at least through to your finalist on, to keep it confidential."
Both Morrison and Wilcox left the district under poor circumstances, which means there’s no clear history of the impact of the community weigh-in on finalists in CMS's more recent history.
Shamarria Morrison: Contact Shamarria Morrison at smorrison@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.