Search for new school chief to continue

COLEBROOKDALE » Despite the sudden withdrawal of the board’s chosen finalist candidate to be the new superintendent last month, the Boyertown Area School Board is bent on having a new district leader in place by the start of the new school year.

That was the message school board President Donna Usavage offered during the May 8 board meeting.

Since April 20 when Keith Yarger, superintendent of the Juniata County School District, pulled his name from consideration, the board has met at least four times in closed-door executive session to discuss the superintendent search, Usavage

announced Tuesday.

“We’ve gone back to the drawing board in our search for new superintendent, with an aggressive timeline and goal of hiring new super by start of the school year,” Usavage said.

“We’re going to do everything within our power to get that done,” she said.

Missing was any explanation for how that will happen.

Usavage previously said that 25 people applied for the superintendent’s position and the board initially interviewed six candidates. That was narrowed to three and Yarger was identified as “the lead candidate,” she said.

Yarger has been superintendent in Juniata since 2014 and prior to that served as superintendent of the Southern Tioga School District from 2011 to 2014.

Whether the board will go back to the other two candidates the board considered as finalists, or begin a new search, remains unknown.

A previous attempt to get an answer to that question from Usavage was met with an email response that read simply “the Board is determining our path forward now and we will share any information we have at the Board meeting next week.”

The need to find a new superintendent becomes more significant when viewed in the light of the fact that the current interim superintendent David Krem, leaves at the end of June, leaving the district without an administrative leader.

Krem, who retired in 2012 from the Wyomissing School District, came out of retirement to serve as interim superintendent in Boyertown while the board searched for a new superintendent. Krem is being paid $800 a day by the Boyertown district.

Yarger was scheduled to replace Richard Faidley who was appointed last July to head the Wilson School District in western Berks County.

Faidley was appointed Boyertown’s superintendent in July 2013. His contract at that time took effect beginning August 2013 and ending on July 31, 2017.

In March 2016, the Boyertown School Board approved a new contract from Faidley, extending his term to June 2020. His salary when he left was $185,661.

“We’re going to do everything within our power to get that done.” Donna Usavage, Boyertown School Board President