School board's consultant has record of success

By By Georgia E. Frye / staff writer
May 15, 2003
Maxine Wolsey, school board president for the Oxford school district, said she is very pleased with the board's choice of a new school superintendent.
The man who helped Oxford find a new superintendent, Richard Boyd, has signed on to help Meridian do the same thing.
Wolsey said Boyd and his group found out exactly what the board and the community wanted, then searched until they found a suitable match.
Oxford's new superintendent, Jerry Webb, will take over July 1. He will replace John Jordan, who left Oxford to become the state's deputy superintendent.
Boyd is one of six consultants with the Center for Educational Leadership Searches, based at the University of Mississippi. The group, which works for a minimum fee of $8,500, is designed to provide a service for the state of Mississippi by improving educational leadership.
It has performed 14 searches for the state, finding school superintendents for Tupelo, Jackson, Vicksburg-Warren and the Pontotoc district.
In addition to Boyd, the group includes: former superintendent for the Pontotoc District, Charles Harrison; Jim Chambless, dean of the school of education at Ole Miss; Andrew Mullins, associate professor of education at Ole Miss; Bobby Papasan, co-director of the North Mississippi Education Consortium and adjunct professor of educational leadership at Ole Miss; and Cecil Weeks, co-director of the North Mississippi Education Consortium and adjunct professor of educational leadership at Ole Miss.
The Meridian School Board plans to advertise the superintendent's job in Education Week, a national newspaper read by many educational leaders, and education Web sites.
Wolsey said the group did an excellent job in the search because its members knew where to look.