2 face interviews to lead schools in Pulaski County's north

Board hears finalists Monday for Jacksonville district helm

The Jacksonville/North Pulaski School Board on Monday selected Bryan Duffie and Robert Ross as finalists to be interviewed next week for the district superintendent's job that will be vacated by Tony Wood on June 30.

Duffie, 46, is currently the assistant superintendent for support services in the Jacksonville district. Ross is the superintendent of the Mansfield School District in Scott and Sebastian counties in west Arkansas.

They were among five people who applied for the post in the 3,927-student district, the state's newest school district. They are also the only two who met the School Board's requirement that the candidates have at least five years of superintendent experience.

Ross, 60, has been superintendent of the Mansfield district since 2011 and was the chief executive of two districts in Texas before that -- Sulphur Bluff Independent School District in Sulphur Bluff from 2008 to 2011; and the Olfen Independent School District in Rowena for the 2007-08 school year. He also has experience as a principal and assistant principal in different Texas systems dating back to 1989.

He has a bachelor's degree from East Texas State University in Commerce, Texas, and a master's degree in education from Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. He has been a candidate for superintendent jobs in Vilonia and Fayetteville in recent years.

Duffie, who has a doctorate from Vanderbilt University, was hired by the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district in March to be one of the district's two assistant superintendents. He had been superintendent of the Westside Consolidated School District in Jonesboro since 2010. He also had been a principal in that district.

Daniel Gray, president of the Jacksonville/North Pulaski board, acknowledged that the pool of applicants was small but said that was also the case when Wood was hired by the board in 2014.

"It is what it is," Gray said. "I'm thankful for the five that applied. I'm thankful that we had interest there. We are still a fledgling, young district with probably a lot of unknowns. That's quite a risk, or at least that's perceived."

Both applicants' interviews will be on Monday, Gray said. A selection will likely be made at a later date, possibly at the board's regular monthly meeting Dec. 5.

The other applicants for the job were Angela Olsen, a former assistant superintendent in the North Little Rock School District and now an office manager for a real estate company in Harrison; Michael Booker, a principal for a Corrections Corp. of America facility in Whiteville, Tenn., and former longtime educator in the Nashville, Tenn., area; and Timm MacDonald, who is a former administrator at West Adams Preparatory High in Los Angeles but moved to Arkansas in July and is not employed.

Wood, 66, announced earlier this month his plan to resign, the step effective at the end of the school year. He is a former Arkansas commissioner of education and deputy commissioner and, before his work in the Arkansas Department of Education, he was a longtime superintendent in the Searcy School District, where he still resides.

The change in the leadership of the district will come after nearly two years of planning for the new system and, now, the first year of operating independently of the Pulaski County Special School District.

The new Jacksonville/North Pulaski district won voter approval of a 7.6-mill tax increase in February and is in the early stages of constructing a new Jacksonville High School that will open in August 2019 and a new elementary school that will open in August 2018. The district is also making long-term plans for replacing other elementary campuses.

Metro on 11/22/2016

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