Kiski Area poised to hire new superintendent
A woman appears to be in line to become Kiski Area School District’s next superintendent.
Kiski Area officials wouldn’t identify the top candidate late this week, but Business Manager Peggy Gillespie said the district’s website would be updated Monday to announce the choice. The school board is expected to vote to approve the hire on Aug. 16, officials said.
“My fellow board members and I put a lot of time and effort into the search. It was a long, eye-opening but exciting process,” board member Mark Flemm said.
“We had a wide variety of candidates with a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience in many different areas of education,” Flemm said.
While not identifying the candidate, Flemm said the top candidate is a woman from outside the district. He said he couldn’t recall a woman previously holding the district’s top administrative post.
The new superintendent will replace acting superintendent Jason Lohr, who was appointed June 21 after Tim Scott announced his retirement in March.
Flemm said Scott’s retirement won’t become official until Nov. 30 because of Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System contract rules.
“We hoped it would be earlier, but we cannot change PSERS calculations,” Flemm said, describing the circumstances as “unique.”
In April, the school board voted 7-1 to pay $13,500 to Templeton Advantage of Perry County, a search firm tasked with conducting the search to replace Scott.
The district had said on its website in July that the board reviewed resumes from nearly two dozen candidates and introduced a short list of candidates to staff members.
Flemm said the board spent weeks reviewing resumes and interviewing candidates in person and via Zoom. It also set up committees to solicit feedback from teachers, administrators and support staff.
The names of the candidates were not made public.
It’s unknown how much money the new superintendent will make. Scott’s salary was $165,500 last school year.
With an annual budget of more than $65 million, the district has about 3,500 students from Westmoreland and Armstrong counties and employs about 400 people.
The Aug. 16 meeting is scheduled to start at 7 p.m.
Joyce Hanz is a native of Charleston, S.C. and is a features reporter covering the Pittsburgh region. She majored in media arts and graduated from the University of South Carolina. She can be reached at jhanz@triblive.com
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.