Dear Monroe School District Community,

This is a very exciting time in the Monroe School District as we continue to work towards selecting a new superintendent to lead our district! As part of our commitment to completing a thorough and transparent search process, and continuing to build partnerships with our community, I wanted to provide an update on our next steps in the process and invite you to participate.

As I shared with you last week, we had 21 candidates apply for our superintendent opening. We were thrilled at this high level of interest and were very pleased to have so many highly qualified leaders in the candidate pool. After thoroughly reviewing the applications and providing our input to HYA Associates, the search firm guiding our superintendent search, invitations to participate in semi-finalist interviews were extended to 6 of the applicants.

Semi-Finalist Interviews & Selection of Finalists - January 20, 2023
The 6 semi-finalist candidates have all accepted the invitation to participate in interviews and the school board will interview them in an executive session, closed to the public, on Friday, January 20th. In alignment with the Open Public Meeting Act, we will publicly open the board meeting at 8:00 a.m. on Friday, announce that we will be entering into an executive session, and then proceed into our executive session. 

As there are 6 candidates to interview, the interviews will take the majority of the day and then we will spend time deliberating as a board afterward. We will then reconvene the public meeting to vote on which candidates will advance to the finalist round. Out of respect for these candidates and their current positions elsewhere, we will not be publicizing their names at this point. We do, however, expect to publicly announce the names of the finalists Friday evening at the conclusion of the board meeting.

Finalist Interviews - January 26, 2023
We will be holding engagement opportunities and stakeholder interviews with the finalist candidates on Thursday, January 26th. The finalists will spend the day in the Monroe School District touring select schools and participating in rounds of interviews with a variety of stakeholder groups. Stakeholder groups that will be interviewing the finalists include district office staff, the superintendent’s executive cabinet, students, certificated staff, classified staff, and a community panel. All of these interviewers and those that engage with the candidates during the school tours will be invited to provide input to the school board to review as part of their decision making process. 

Invitation to Observe Community Interviews & Provide Your Input
The community panel interviews will be held publicly and all community members are invited to observe in-person or via Zoom. These interviews will be held from 6:00-8:30 on January 26th at the District Administration Office (14692 179th Avenue SE, Monroe). The Zoom link can be found on our website HERE next week. Spanish interpretation will be available. All community members observing these interviews will also be invited to share their input online for the school board to consider as part of their decision making process.

While the community panel interviews are occurring, the finalists will be rotating through their final interviews with the school board in an executive session. Once the interviews conclude, the board will spend time deliberating, and will publicly reconvene afterward to potentially vote on our selection for superintendent and adjourn the meeting.

We are very excited about our pool of semi-finalist candidates and are looking forward to learning more about them through the upcoming rounds of interviews. We are also looking forward to our staff, students, families, and community members engaging in the process and sharing their input with us on January 26th. 

In Partnership,

Jennifer Bumpus
MSD Board President