The school board has narrowed down its search for a replacement for outgoing Superintendent Bill Burr to three finalists.
The board scheduled a special meeting for Monday, May 12, “to act on the superintendent finalists and discuss interview dates,” according to the meeting announcement.
The board approved the list of three finalists after a five-hour, closed-door session Wednesday, May 7: Joshua Garrett, Mark Lee and Frank Oakes.
As of Monday afternoon, May 12, the board had not released any information on the finalists — such as the applicants’ current positions — while waiting for the three to respond to notification that they were selected.
After ending their May 7 executive session and coming back into a public meeting, board members voted unanimously to contact the finalists and invite them for interviews.
Board Chair Dave Wilson stated that no action was taken in executive session.
Before reconvening the public session, Wilson asked of his members: “Hold it, before we do, we’re all good on the motion and everything, right?”
There was no discussion of the finalists by the board in the public session, which lasted about one minute.
The board ran the candidate search itself to save money, rather than contracting with a search firm. The district received eight applications for the job.
Burr submitted his resignation in March; he has led the district the past four school years. His contract ends June 30.
He told radio station KSTK that has some job offers, and he thinks his next work will involve artificial intelligence. “I might go back into the tech world,” he said. “AI is a really big thing right now, and I see that definitely being involved in modern education. Refreshing myself a little bit on that is professionally expanding.”
Burr came to Wrangell from the Delta/Greely School District in Alaska’s Interior, where he had been assistant superintendent since 2014 and had also served as director of technology.
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