Hartselle BOE to interview four superintendent candidates

The Hartselle Board of Education will interview four candidates to replace outgoing School Superintendent Mike Reed.

The slate of candidates includes the following candidates:

• Edward “Eddie” Ingram, superintendent of Franklin County Schools in Louisburg, N.C.

• Sandra Spivey, director of secondary education for Madison County Schools.

• Paul “Vic” Wilson, principal of Mountain Brook High School.

• Camille Wright, director of instruction for the Madison City Board of Education.

Wilson is scheduled for the first interview on May 28, followed by Wright on May 30, Spivey on June 4 and Ingram on June 6. Each of the four candidates will be interviewed in an open meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. at the central office.

Community members, teachers and others can meet each of the candidates during a meet-and-greet session from 4 to 5:30 p.m. each day, likely at the Hartselle Fine Arts Center.

Sandra Sims-deGraffenried of BWP & Associates said each of the four finalists have doctorate degrees. They selected the four out of a list of 45 potential candidates from 13 different states.

“We reached out to more than that,” Sims-deGraffenried said. “I feel really good about the list of candidates.”

Two of the candidates are candidates in other searches as well. Wright is a finalist in the Athens superintendent search while Ingram is a finalist for another superintendent’s position in North Carolina.

The board also now has three finalists for its chief school financial officer position. They are Jonathan Craft, Maria Glover and Tina Parris.

Ken Roberts with the Alabama Association of School Boards said he feels good about the candidates. He said doing the interviews of the candidates could be tricky since each is sitting a CSFO and has a mid-year budget adjustment deadline on June 15.

He suggested either doing the interviews before or after the deadline, but board member Monty Vest said doing them before the deadline could conflict with the board’s interviews of its school superintendent candidates.

“I think we should just focus on one task at a time and move the interviews until after the superintendent interviews have been completed,” Vest said.

To that end, the board approved the contract extension between Finatra, Inc. in Athens to provide the services of consultant Lisa McMurray to provide Hartselle City Schools with finance and accounting services through June 30.

However, the contract could likely be extended again if a CSFO cannot start by July 1.