GREEN BAY – During its July 28 meeting, Green Bay Area Public Schools (GBAPS) looked at options for conducting the search for a new district superintendent.
GBAPS Board President James Lyerly presented four options for filling the role of superintendent for the district.
Vicki Bayer has assumed the superintendent role since February 2004, after the resignation of Claude Tiller, Jr.
In November, she signed a contract for the position through the 2025-26 school year.
“We have been talking about two options and only two options to date, for only one reason, right? That’s pre-existing relationships,” Lyerly said. “The last search was conducted by BWP and Associates. And since Dr Diller did not complete the contract period, they offer a no-cost engagement, except for travel and expenses, to do a redo of that search.
“And then we have an existing relationship with Wisconsin Association of School Boards (WASB), and they provide an SLO (service level objective) service to support districts through a superintendent search as well.”
But Lyerly said that there were actually four options that the board should entertain.
“One, unsupported — no vendor — just doing this internal with board members. Two is to take BWP and Associates — uphold their contract guarantee — and a very initial rough-grain estimate of the travel expenses. Again, these can be controlled. I put out there about $5,000 for those expenses and helping us with community engagement or whatever. But the actual number is, it’s not a fact yet, because they haven’t submitted any kind of proposal and that was based on the conversation.
“Wisconsin Association of School Boards, had a conversation with them, and their estimates for services came in between $21-26,000. It’s not a redo search, so they have a different pricing schedule.
“Between the two, there are very different engagement types. BWP, being exclusively a recruiting organization, holds proprietary the actual application package and all of the supplemental sources or resources until such time as they get selected to be on an interview panel; last time, that interview panel was seven. And that’s when we received a bound copy of all of the application materials.
“WASB is very different in that they are looking to have relationships with school boards and this is a service that they provide. They give us access to all of the application materials the day after the application window closes. And so we have the ability to be very hands-on with those applications.
“The difference between the low end and the high end of that estimate is the low end they are calling on the board to basically do all of the applicant screening, all of the panel selection, all of the reference checks at that point. So really they advertise and aggregate and provide the data access to the applications.”
Lyerly said that the fourth option would be going to RFP (request for proposals) to “make sure that we are not missing opportunities to engage an organization that is better suited cost-wise and scope of services-wise.”
Five board members — Alex Mineau, Jeanette Knill, Lynn Gerlach, Lyerly and Andrew Becker — supported exploring the RFP process.
Lyerly will work with the district to create potential RFP verbiage.
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