Community members within the Union Community School District will have two opportunities to interact with the district’s hiring search for its next superintendent of schools.

On February 21 the district accepted the resignation of Superintendent Travis Fleshner following the February 16 announcement he had been hired by the Aplington-Parkersburg Community School District to be its next superintendent beginning in July.

Since then, Union has opened its own hiring search to find Fleshner’s replacement.

The first intersection in the hiring process between the community and the school district is a stakeholder survey open to anyone within the Union community that seeks to identify priorities for the board of education and the district hiring committee to consider when making their hiring decision.

The survey is available online at https://tinyurl.com/9dh9rwbz and will remain open until March 13. The five-question survey can be taken anonymously or by voluntarily providing contact information.

The survey asks participants to identify strength areas or points of pride as well as challenges or areas for improvement for the Union Community School District.

The survey also provides a list of professional skills and personal traits/qualities and asks participants to select their top three most important when considering a candidate for superintendent. Finally the survey concludes with an open question soliciting advice for the new superintendent.

The Grundmeyer Leader Services (GLS) consulting firm – which the Union Board of Education contracted with to conduct the district’s superintendent hiring search – will produce a general report based on the information gathered in this survey. The report will be shared with the board to advise them on what priorities the district and community stakeholders are looking for in a new leader.

The application period opened on Feb. 22 and will close on March 20.

During the week of April 4, the board of education and the GLS hiring consultants will process the applications and narrow down the pool of candidates with the anticipation of conducting semi-finalist interviews via Zoom the week of April 11.

A pool of finalist candidates will be announced publicly soon after leading up to the final in-person interviews set for the week of April 18 with a hiring decision likely to follow soon after.

The second opportunity community members will have to interact with the superintendent hiring process will be during the final interview stage.

The interview team will include teachers, coaches, support staff, students, administrators, school board members, and community members. Input from the formal interview team, as well as the information received from the stakeholder surveys, will be utilized by the board as works toward a final hiring decision.