Five apply for KCS superintendent

Five educators throughout the country have submitted applications to oversee the Knox County Schools system with only two weeks remaining to apply.

The applicants include educational consultants, former teachers and a superintendent of the year.
The deadline to apply is Jan. 13. The superintendent search committee, which includes school board members Amber Rountree, Tony Norman and Susan Horn, then meets Jan. 17.

"I think we should probably start seeing more apps come in now that the holidays are over,” said Rountree who is the chairwoman of the committee.

School members opted not to seek a recruiter to help fill the position, much like they did more than eight years ago when officials hired Jim McIntyre, a then-finance director in the Boston school system.

Instead, KCS began advertising the job Dec. 8 on its website and placed advertisements in national and regional publications.

As it stands, the school board has set an annual salary between $200,000 and $240,000.
McIntyre, who earned $228,000 stepped down in July. He took a job with the University of Tennessee.

The board picked Buzz Thomas, the leader of the Great Schools Partnership, to stand in until a replacement was named.

Thomas is not expected to apply for the job on a full-time basis and has publicly expressed an interest to go back to the Partnership by this summer.

Here’s a snapshot of the applicants who have submitted resumes as of Jan. 2:

• Catherine Beck: Assistant superintendent of the 3,500-student Summit County School District in Colorado.
• Cedrick Gray: A former ‘superintendent of the year” by the National Association of Superintendents, Gray stepped down as leader of the Jackson Public Schools, a 28-000-student system in Mississippi. He previously worked as the director of schools in Fayette County in West Tennessee but left in 2012 after questions about financial discrepancies in school spending arose.
• Andrei Ghelman: Secondary coordinator for the 47,000 student, 59 schools Collier County Public Schools in Naples, Fla. He also serves as an adjunct professor at Florida Gulf Coast University. He previously worked as a teacher and principal for Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland.
• Thomas Graves: An educational consultant since 2010, he also served as the assistant superintendent of Washington County Schools in Abingdon, Va. From 2006 to 2010.
• Tonya Harris: Superintendent of the St. Louis charter school Preclarus Mastery Academy. The school, which for years had a high student absentee rate, has seen some improvements. Harris previously worked as an assistant principal in for District of Columbia Public Schools.