School board hires search firm to find its next superintendent

Current administrator will be let go June 30

The Mars Area school board voted Tuesday to hire a search firm to find its next superintendent.

Board members voted 5-3 to hire Templeton Advantage LLC, at a cost not to exceed $16,900, to conduct the search to replace current Superintendent Wesley Shipley. The board had voted the previous week to notify Mr.

Shipley that his contract would not be renewed when it expires June 30.

Templeton Advantage is run by a retired educator, Tom Templeton, who was a longtime deputy chief of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.

Board members Rita Dorsch, J. Dayle Ferguson, Gordon Marburger, Sallie Wick and President John Kennedy voted for Templeton Advantage.

Christine Valenta and Kevin Hagen opposed the motion. Both expressed a preference for

McPherson & Jacobson LLC, of Omaha, Neb., which is currently handling the superintendent search for Fox Chapel Area.

“I like the structure laid out by Jacobson,” Mrs. Valenta said. “They have functionalities that we did not have the last two times we went through this process.”

But Mrs. Dorsch said McPherson & Jacobson is “further away from the source than I would like them to be.”

Mrs. Wick noted that McPherson & Jacobson had not placed anybody in Pennsylvania in the past five years. “That is a concern to me. Why haven’t other districts used them?”

Templeton Advantage, on the other hand, found superintendents for Butler Area, Hampton, Avonworth and other districts in Western Pennsylvania. “He is someone who is used to Pennsylvania and knows Pennsylvania school districts,” Mrs. Wick said.

Solicitor Tom King, who sought proposals from several individuals and firms that do superintendent searches, said a national firm is not necessary for a national search.

“You can ask them to advertise on the national school board site,” he said. “You can ask them to advertise in The New York Times if you want.”

In other business, the board tabled adoption of the 2020-21 calendar because it had not been released early enough to get public input. The proposed calendar starts school for students on Aug. 26 and ends school on June 2, 2021.

There is one snow makeup day on April 1, but any additional snow days, up to five, will be flexible instruction days, where students work from home on their district-issued devices.