The Little Rock School Board will conduct online interviews tonight with the first two of four candidates for the job of superintendent in the 21,000-student district.
Two more candidates will be interviewed by the nine-member School Board -- also using an online format -- on Wednesday.
The School Board is in the process of selecting a replacement for Superintendent Mike Poore, 60, who has said he will retire at the end of June, concluding six years as the Little Rock School District's chief executive.
Stephanie Jones, chief officer for the Office of Diverse Learner Supports and Services for the 355,000-student Chicago Public Schools since August 2019 and a former director of special education services in the South Holland, Ill., school system for five years before that, will meet with the Little Rock board at 5:30 p.m. today.
Jermall Wright, superintendent of schools since July 2019 for the Mississippi Achievement School District that is an arm of the Mississippi Board of Education and, as such, oversees the Yazoo City and Humphreys County school systems, will follow with an interview at 7:30 p.m. He was a chief academic and accountability officer in Birmingham, Ala., from 2017-2019, and held earlier administrative jobs in Philadelphia, Pa., and Denver, Colo.
Lloyd Jackson, assistant superintendent of school leadership since July 2019 in the Kansas City, Mo., public schools and formerly a deputy superintendent from 2017 to 2019 in the Hot Springs School District, will be interviewed at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.
George "Eric" Thomas will follow with a 7:30 p.m. interview on Wednesday. Thomas is a national consultant for the University of Virginia's Partnership for Leaders in Education and a former deputy superintendent/chief turnaround officer from 2017 to 2020 for the Georgia Board of Education. He has held different positions in the Cincinnati, Ohio, school district, including chief innovation officer and high school principal.
Greg Adams, president of the Little Rock School Board, said Monday that each of the interviews between the board and a candidate will be conducted in executive session, which is closed to the public.
The board will then meet at 5:30 p.m. April 5 -- again in executive session -- to discuss the interviews, Adams said.
Asked if any decisions -- even a final selection -- might be made on April 5, Adams said that is an open question.
"Whether or not we will have any decisions to make at that point about possibly going on to second round interviews for one or more of the people -- I don't know if we will make a decision then, or revisit and tentatively make a decision at our April 14 meeting," Adams said.
The April 14 meeting is the board's regularly scheduled monthly agenda meeting, which is routinely paired with a special action meeting of the board.
BWP & Associates of Libertyville, Ill., is facilitating the superintendent search for the board.
The four candidates selected by the board for the interviews come out of the pool of 12 people who submitted complete applications to BWP & Associates. An additional four people started the process of becoming candidates, but two of those did not complete the applications and two others withdrew.
All of the four applicants to be interviewed have doctorate degrees.
Debra Hill, BWP & Associates' lead consultant for the Little Rock search, told the board earlier this month that the recommended candidates are those who best matched -- by at least 80% -- the qualifications and characteristics that Little Rock board members , district employees and community members said they wanted in the district's chief executive.
March 5 was the deadline for candidates to apply to the search firm.
Poore was superintendent of the Bentonville School District in 2016 when he was appointed by Arkansas Education Secretary Johnny Key to the superintendent's job in what was at the time the state-controlled district.
The district was returned to the operation of a locally elected School Board in late 2020.
In November, Poore's contract was amended by the School Board to give him a $36,000 raise to an annual salary of $270,000. That contract expires June 30.