HUNTINGTON BEACH : Consultant to Head Replacement Search

The Huntington Beach City School District has hired a former Orange County superintendent to guide its search for a successor to Supt. Diana Peters.

Leland B. Newcomer, Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s first superintendent, will head the search to replace Peters, who resigned amid controversy in August.

District officials said they hope to hire a new superintendent by early April. Because the makeup of the board may change after the Nov. 6 election, the search is not scheduled to begin until December.

Newcomer, whom trustees chose among three finalists for the job, spent 38 years as an educator before becoming a school-personnel consultant in 1982. He recently has helped the Orange Unified and Tustin Unified school districts hire superintendents.

He was Newport-Mesa’s superintendent from 1965, when the district was first unified, until 1968.

The district’s superintendent selection figures to be the most important issue facing the school board after the election, in which President Sherry Barlow and trustees Patricia Cohen and Robert Mann are running against four challengers.

Trustees bought out Peters’ contract for more than $140,000, less than a year after a board majority had extended her contract through 1993. Peters and trustees said her departure resulted from “philosophical differences” that drove a wedge between them. They have declined to elaborate.