Finalists named in Metro Schools director search

Search firm narrows list to veterans from Chattanooga, California and Washington state

Email | Print By Amy Griffith Graydon

Former Chattanooga director of schools Jesse Register is one of three final candidates for director of public schools in Nashville.

Santiago Wood of Fresno, Calif., and Doris McEwen of Washington state, are the other two to be considered.

Board members will interview the finalists this weekend. The top three candidates were identified Tuesday by hired consultant Bill Attea of search firm Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates Ltd.

All three finalists have worked as superintendents and have achieved some success with high-risk populations of students, Attea said.

Register was director of Hamilton County Schools in Chattanooga for 10 years. School reform in that city has been praised publicly by the Tennessee Department of Education, and many of the DOE’s changes made at Metro Nashville Public Schools this summer were patterned after initiatives in Chattanooga. He left Hamilton County Schools in 2006 and has since worked as an educational consultant. View his application here.

Candidate Wood was superintendent of the public school system in Fresno, a large urban district with many similarities to Nashville, Attea said. Read his application here.

McEwen, who currently works as a professor at the University of Washington at Seattle, previously served as superintendent of the Clover Park School District in Lakewood, Wash., a small but highly diverse district with high student turnover levels. Her application is available here.

Attea said Nashville’s director search was among the most difficult he has conducted, due to influences on the district from the Mayor’s Office, the Tennessee Department of Education, and others. The district’s status under federal No Child Left Behind laws has also complicated the search.

“There are a lot of unique political implications in this search. All of the candidates are aware of them,” Attea said.

More than 20 complete applications were submitted, Attea said.

Nashville’s public school district is currently in a state of flux, in large part because of the district’s status under federal No Child Left Behind laws.

Metro Nashville Public Schools, as a district, could this summer enter a legal status that would allow the Tennessee Department of Education to remove the director of schools. That legal status could also allow the state to appoint a trustee in charge of the school district — a role that Mayor Karl Dean has said he is preparing to fill, in the event that he is requested to do so.

Dean is paying the search firm’s fee using privately raised funds, but has said publicly for months that he believes a short-term or interim director should be hired. School board members, however, have come to a consensus that they may extend a three- to four-year contract to the right candidate.

According to Attea, good candidates will know that it takes at least that long to turn around a troubled school district.

Interviews are slated to take place at 9 and 11:15 a.m. on Saturday. A third interview is scheduled for 4 p.m. Sunday, followed by board deliberation Sunday evening.

Favorite candidates of the board will visit Nashville again toward the end of next week.