The revolving door of leadership at the Rochester City School District spins again as the school board moves forward with its search for a permanent superintendent.
Board President Cynthia Elliott said this time will be different than the last.
“We're looking at ensuring that this is a wide landscape, is a wide reach of involving our community in this search,” Elliott said in a school board meeting last week. “We want to make sure that we're doing it right this time.”
The last search for a permanent superintendent was in 2022, after the school board ousted then-Superintendent Lesli Myers-Small weeks before the start of school.
The board ultimately ditched efforts for community input and held a snap vote in December, elevating interim-Superintendent Carmine Peluso to the role just before winter break.
Peluso left this past summer after 18 months on the job, taking the superintendent’s post with the Churchville-Chili Central School District.
Needing a new interim, school board members initially eschewed any internal candidates. But they ultimately appointed then-deputy superintendent of teaching and learning Demario Strickland to the position.
In his first week on the job, Strickland, 39, said he had a vision of becoming a superintendent by the time he was 40, and expressed interest in being appointed permanently.
Who gets a say in selecting the next superintendent of Rochester city schools is up to the board, which has yet to finalize exactly which groups will have a seat at the table.
Last Tuesday, the board members discussed the search process. That is expected to include focus groups and interviews with students, parents, union leaders and different community organizations taking place Oct. 14-28.
The drafted list of participants includes groups such as MCC Men of Excellence, Mount Oliver Baptist Church, and Baden Street Settlement House.
“There are many programs at MCC, and that's kind of weird that we would just focus in on one only,” said Vice President Beatriz LeBron.
There are key partners like the Rochester Education Foundation and many local colleges that are not accounted for on the drafted list, LeBron said.
“We're trying to submit a list with one program out of MCC and one Head Start program and one settlement house out of many that we have currently in our community, who all deserve a voice at the table too,” she said. “Instead of us just saying Baden Street, it should be the settlement houses.”
Board member Amy Maloy echoed that request for a broader approach.
“We have a specific church listed here, right? Would it be better to perhaps just have the Ministry Alliance instead of a specific faith group?” Maloy said.
The school board is expected to finalize its list of participants for the superintendent search process at the next school board business meeting on Thursday.
