|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Mountain View Los Altos Union High School District is looking to move quickly to pick its next leader, with the school board planning to be ready to vote on hiring a new superintendent next month.
Superintendent Nellie Meyer announced in March that she would retire at the end of the current school year after five years leading the high school district.
The school board has since held two special meetings to work on finding a replacement. At a March 27 meeting, the board voted unanimously to hire the same outside consultants who ran the search process that led to Meyer’s hiring in 2019. These consultants then met with the board at an April 5 meeting to nail down a hiring process and timeline.
The idea is to have the board vote on the next superintendent’s contract at a May 20 meeting. If the board runs into problems finding a suitable candidate, there is a contingency plan in place with a longer timeline that would lead to a vote at a June 3 meeting.
Getting the MVLA superintendent search underway
At the March 27 meeting, the board approved spending $23,200 to hire Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates (HYA) to lead the search. Board member Phil Faillace noted that the district will need to move efficiently because there’s less time to find a replacement than the last time there was a superintendent vacancy.
“This time we have a truncated runway, which means we have to get up to speed really fast,” Faillace said.
Meyer told the Voice that she informed the board of her retirement on March 18, and said that there are superintendents in other districts who have since announced their retirements.
The consultants have already begun actively recruiting for the job, as well as interviewing board members and other officials about what they are looking for in MVLA’s next leader, search consultant Diane Siri said at the April 5 meeting.
In addition to the board members, HYA’s consultants are interviewing Meyer, top district administrators, principals and union leaders about the search, Siri said. They are also reaching out to the district’s Family Partnership Council, Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council and MVLA High School Foundation to ask for feedback via email on a list of desired leadership characteristics that were used during the last superintendent search.
That same list is posted on the district’s website and anyone can reach out to the search firm with suggestions.
The board members plan to review that updated set of characteristics at a Monday, April 15 meeting. Members of the public can come to that meeting and provide comments on the search. According to board President Sanjay Dave, the district will give the public until April 17 to provide feedback on the list of characteristics.
The initial application deadline is noon on April 22, but the position is listed as being open until filled.
Reviewing and interviewing the candidates
The board plans to meet in closed session on April 23 to review the candidates and decide who to interview. Before that meeting, the search consultants said they will have already completed a screening call with each of the candidates and sorted them into tiers.
On May 2 and 3 the board plans to meet in closed session again, this time to interview the candidates. According to Siri, most school boards select five to seven candidates to interview, but the number can vary.
The board then plans to interview its finalists – likely two or three candidates – in closed session on May 7 and 9. Board members intend to debrief in the afternoon on May 9.
Making the hire
Following the interviews, the district will negotiate an employment contract with the candidate of choice, and hire an outside firm to run a background check. The idea would be for the contract to be ready for the board to approve at its May 20 meeting.
Approving the hire on May 20, rather than at the subsequent June 3 meeting, would be preferable for the incoming MVLA superintendent. That’s because the new hire will need to resign from their current district, which they typically won’t do until their new district formally hires them, Siri said.
However, if MVLA doesn’t find a suitable candidate in time, HYA has also laid out a second timeline that would lead to a vote on June 3.
The district plans to conduct the search confidentially, meaning that the candidates won’t be publicly disclosed, except for the person who is ultimately selected.
Siri said that there have been cases where candidates who are already superintendents in other districts pull out when they learn the search won’t be confidential.
“Sometimes it’s when some difficult things are going on in (their) district, and they do not want to be seen with one foot out the door if they are not competitive in your district,” Siri said. “There is some risk in a search that is more public of losing (candidates), especially sitting superintendents.”
The Monday, April 18, school board meeting will begin at 7 p.m. in the district’s board room, 1299 Bryant Ave., Mountain View. For more information and to view the agenda, visit mvlapub.ic-board.com.
Mountain View moves forward with $4.6M plan to fix eroded banks at Stevens CreekMay 5, 2026 11:19 am
