ORANGE : District Picks Superintendent

The seven-month search for a superintendent for the Orange Unified School District has ended.

Dr. Norman Guith, superintendent of the Alvord Unified School District in Riverside County, was selected from 43 applicants in the nationwide search to replace John Ikerd.

Ikerd resigned last November after school board members expressed a lack of confidence in him.

Guith called his appointment “the biggest opportunity of my life” and said he relishes the challenge of stepping into a troubled district like Orange Unified. The district has experienced bitter union conflicts, financial scandal and fiscal instability in the past decade.

“When I ask anyone to tell me about Orange, they start talking about the problems here,” Guith said. “Yet I look at their test scores and I see an education system that’s very strong.”

Guith, who has spent 14 years as a school superintendent, said “everything I’ve learned I’ll be able to put to use in Orange. And I should be able to help them make the district the best in the county--if not the state.”

Guith will take over immediately for interim superintendent Stan Corey, said Tom Neill, a spokesman for the district. Guith, 50, was superintendent of the Central School District in San Bernardino from 1978 to 1982 and was superintendent of the Borrego Springs Unified School District from 1975 to 1978.

He received a doctorate in educational administration from the University of Southern California in 1974. He and his wife, Melani, live in Alta Loma and have eight children.