IRVINE : Senior Staff Gets Shot at District’s Top Post

The Irvine Unified School District will look within its organization for candidates to replace Supt. David E. Brown before deciding whether to conduct a nationwide search, board members said.

The school board decision has raised the possibility that an Irvine school district administrator could be named to replace Brown without a search for candidates outside the school district.

School board members also agreed that the selection of a new superintendent will not be made until after November school board elections.

Brown, who was hired in 1987, is leaving in November to become superintendent of the Napa Valley Unified School District.

Of the district’s three top administrators under Brown, only Deputy Supt. Dean Waldfogel has said he will not be a candidate.

Deputy Supts. Susan Long and Paul Reed say they have not ruled out the possibility. Long was hired in 1987 as deputy superintendent of personnel services. Reed, 47, first came to the school district in 1974 as a special education teacher. He became an administrator in 1986 under Irvine Unified’s founding Supt. A. Stanley Corey.

Last week, the school board authorized an initial search that includes hiring a consulting firm to survey community opinions on the 21,500-student district, develop a “job profile” and evaluate candidates from within the district.