CONEJO VALLEY : Schools May Hire Job-Hunt Consultant
The Conejo Valley Unified School District may pay a consultant as much as $20,000 to help the school board find a replacement for Supt. William Seaver, who will retire in June.
The school board has instructed the district staff to compile a list of consultants and the fees that they would charge to recruit candidates to succeed Seaver, a 37-year district employee who was appointed superintendent in 1987.
School board members will probably choose the consultant on Jan. 28 or Feb. 11 at one of the board’s regular meetings, a district official said.
A recent report by the district staff showed that of 37 California suburban school districts surveyed, 32 had recruited a superintendent within the last few years and 22 hired consultants to aid in their searches, at an average cost of $15,000.
In five of the districts, the district staff conducted searches for new superintendents at a cost of about $1,000, and in the remaining five there were no searches because a district administrator was chosen.
Several school board members have said a consultant should be hired because district officials don’t have the time to recruit.
Maria Hagman, first vice president of the local chapter of the California School Employee Assn. and a food services manager at Los Cerritos Intermediate School, said the association’s board has questioned why the school board doesn’t want to try first to hire from within the district.
However, board President Mildred Lynch said the board will probably want a wider pool of candidates.
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