JACKSON – Members of the Mississippi Board of Education say it will take longer to hire the next state superintendent than it did to hire Hank Bounds in 2005.

The nine-member board is in the process of replacing Bounds, who has stepped down as head of the state’s kindergarten through 12th grade public schools to oversee Mississippi’s higher education system.

Bounds’ last day as state superintendent was Friday. John Jordan, who previously served as Oxford superintendent, will begin his service as the interim superintendent starting Monday as the board looks for a full-time leader.

“Last time we did it in a little over 60 days,” said Bill Jones of Petal, chair of the state board. “We ran the notice in a lot of publications and got a lot of applications.

“We selected eight of them to interview.”

Jones said this time it could take “90 days, but I will not be surprised if it takes 120 days.”

A new committee

In 2005, board member Claude Hartley of Tupelo headed a search committee to find a superintendent. But this time the board has contracted with the Mississippi School Boards Association for $25,000 to conduct the search.

Jones said that he believes the search could move faster by using the same method as in 2005, but that a majority of the board wanted an outside group to oversee the search to remove any perceptions of favoritism toward any particular candidate.

The Board of Education will meet Aug. 13 with Michael Waldrop, executive director of the School Boards Association, to get specifics on what it wants in the next state superintendent.

Nationwide search

One of the functions of the School Boards Association is to conduct superintendent searches, but it normally does so for local school boards.

Because the post will be advertised in education periodicals, Jones expects applications from throughout the nation. But he also expects the search to focus primarily in Mississippi and surrounding states, though he did not rule out any possibilities.

Usually, companies conducting such searches will take the applicants and select a group for the board to consider, based on the criteria provided by the board.

The board probably will interview several candidates before agreeing on one.

“I would think there would be a lot of applicants,” said Hartley, who also led the search for the Tupelo Public School District superintendent in the late 1980s when he was a member of that school board. “The down side is that no one lasts long in this job. I am sure that is not lost on people.”

Hartley said the demands of the job normally lead to short tenures.

A first

Since the current system was created in the 1980s with an appointed state board that selects the superintendent, no superintendent has lasted more than five years, and that was the first, Richard Boyd.

He also later served about six months as the interim state superintendent in the 1990s.

The new interim, Jordan, was selected by the board after the board’s previous choice for the interim job, former Deputy Superintendent Judy Rhodes, was ruled ineligible by Attorney General Jim Hood because she lacked some of the education qualifications.

Jordan also is a former deputy state superintendent and is currently employed by Tupelo-based Bailey Education Group as the chief executive officer. As the interim state superintendent, he will earn $307,000 annually, which is the amount designated by law for the state superintendent.

Jordan has in the past been a finalist for the post of state superintendent, but Jones has stressed he will not be a candidate for the permanent job this time.