8 Finalists for School Superintendent Job

School trustees are close to selecting a new superintendent for the fast-growing Oxnard Elementary School District, still recovering from past acrimony and a wire-tapping scandal two years ago.

The five school board members are scheduled to interview eight candidates Friday and Saturday and hope to make their decision by mid-April. The finalists were selected from among 19 contenders, said consultant Sharon Giles, who will receive up to $12,500 for heading the search.

Among the contenders is interim Supt. Richard Duarte, who has led the district since former Supt. Bernie Korenstein left the district in August to take a lower-paying job as the county’s special education coordinator. The other candidates are from California and elsewhere.

Korenstein left not long after the end of a trial in which a former district administrator, Pedro Placencia, was found guilty of illegally tapping the phone calls of a trustee who later declined to seek reelection.

Duarte, an Oxnard resident with degrees from UC Santa Barbara, Cal State Northridge, USC and Cal State Los Angeles, has spent 26 years in the 15,386-student district. He has worked as a teacher, principal and assistant superintendent.

“I have the skills, knowledge and ability to be superintendent,” said Duarte, who earns about $111,000 a year as interim schools chief. “I also believe I’ve contributed a lot to the community. I believe in this community.”

The Oxnard district is bracing to build four schools in the near future. With half its students struggling to learn English, the district continues to work at implementing the anti-bilingual education Proposition 227.