SEQUIM – The Sequim School Board will interview on Saturday five candidates for the position of superintendent – including one administrator already working in the district.
The candidates are Patra Boots, director of instructional support and community school principal at Sequim School District; Bill Bentley, assistant superintendent at Evergreen School District; Bette Bullock, superintendent at Lake County School District in Leadville, Colo.; Tom Churchill, former superintendent at Entiat School District; and Kirk Miller, superintendent at Havre School District in Montana.
Sequim Superintendent Garn Christensen will become superintendent of the 5,200-student Eastmont School District in East Wenatchee in July.
After the interviews, which will be conducted in executive session, the board is expected to narrow the pool of candidates to two or three finalists.
The names of the finalists for the top administrative post in the district, which has about 3,000 students, will be released Monday, along with a timeline of when the interviews will take place.
“We’ll be interviewing the five candidates and the goal is to have them each for an hour,” said School Board President Sarah Bedinger.
“We’ll have about 20 observers who will be giving us feedback, and then we will consider at the end of the day who the two or three finalists will be.”
The observers include representatives from each school as well as pther district staff, parents and other community members.
Next Tuesday through Thursday, finalists will tour schools and appear at public meetings, where community members can ask questions of the candidates.
The meetings at the Sequim High School Library, 601 N. Sequim Ave., at 5:30 p.m. will be open to the public.
The board may choose the new superintendent by the end of April.
Christensen is the second Clallam County schools superintendent who has announced he will depart at the end of the school year.
In January, Quillayute Valley School District Superintendent Frank Walter said that he is resigning after six years at the helm to marry his fiancee, an educator in Lakewood in Pierce County.
The Quillayute Valley School Board has named the district’s director of student services, Diana Reaume, to replace Walter in Forks in June.
