Haines schoolInterviews for Haines School District superintendent candidates start next week, and the plan is for the school board to make an offer on Feb. 24.

There are 21 applicants for the top job in the Haines school district. They’ll go through a few rounds of scrutiny before the school board narrows down the pool of finalists.

It’ll start Tuesday (Feb. 9), when a committee of school staff will meet with the two Alaska Association of School Board consultants who were hired to conduct the superintendent search. The committee will grade each application with a yes, no or maybe.

At 5 p.m. Tuesday, the school board will take that input and review the applications in executive session. Then, they’ll publically announce around five or six semi-finalists.

The next day (Feb. 10), the board will interview the semi-finalists by phone starting at 11:30 a.m. Those interviews will be open to the public. The board will take a break at 1:30 to allow some members to go back to work. Then, they’ll reconvene at about 4:30, go back into a closed-door session, and come out with the finalists.

The board will invite the finalists to Haines Feb. 23 and 24 for a community meet-and-greet and in-person interviews, which will be public. Finally, on the 24th, the board will go into executive session and, if all goes as planned, decide who will be the next superintendent.

In other school news, at a Tuesday meeting, the board approved adding a teacher in-service day to this year’s calendar that was not originally scheduled. The April 25 in-service would allow teachers to take state-mandated training, including crisis intervention education. April 25 will be a day off for students.

The board voiced no objections to the school administration’s plan to return to the former bell schedule next year. This year, the district lengthened four weekdays in order to have weekly early dismissals each Thursday. Principal Rene Martin says parent, student and staff feedback sent a decisive message that the old schedule works better.

The next regular school board meeting is March 1.