BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C.—The search for a new school superintendent for Berkeley County has headed back to square one.
Monday night in a 5 to 3 vote, board members voted to reopen the superintendent search—just days after three finalists were identified and had met with the public during three separate community events.
Not every school board member approved of the new search. Mac McQuillin, Phillip Obie and Sallie Wofford all voted against it.
“I appreciate everyone’s involvement in the search process. We all put our hearts into this,” McQuillin said in a statement to The Berkeley Observer. “I am very disappointed that the board was unable to choose from the three outstanding candidates we had.”
On April 25th, school district officials had announced the three finalists for the position. They were Dr. Rocky Killion of West Lafayette, Indiana; Dr. Barry Shepherd of Concord, North Carolina; and Dr. Jason Van Heudkelum of Condord, North Carolina.
Originally, school board officials had hoped to make a final decision early this month.
BWP & Associates will reportedly continue the search for candidates, and school officials say they will not charge any additional fee to re-open or extend the search to recruit candidates for Board consideration.
The decision to re-open the search resulted from the board being notified last weekend that one of its three finalist superintendent candidates was withdrawing his name from consideration. Chairman Kent Murray was unable to discuss at length why the candidate withdrew because of the confidentiality of personnel discussions.
As far as the timeline for the re-opened search, Murray said that BWP advises that the search extension could take up to a month or could extend in the Fall in order to have optimal time to recruit candidates.
Board members expressed great appreciation to the staff and community for their participation in last week’s meetings and receptions for the search finalists.
“We know not having a selection made at this point can be discouraging for all of us, but we have to get this right because it is the most important responsibility of the Board. We ask our community and staff to please continue to work with us as we deal with our challenges and continue to seek the right leader for our school district,” said Murray.
The search for a new superintendent comes after the resignation of Dr. Rodney Thompson who was also recently indicted for allegedly using public funds and property to influence the outcome of the 2012 “Yes 4 Schools” campaign.
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