New super on board by Sept.
District received 29 applications for top job
BY DANIELLE MEDINA Correspondent

BRICK TOWNSHIP - The search for a superintendent- the district's fourth in less than a year - has begun, school officials said recently.

"We are very much on schedule," interim Superintendent MaryAnn Ceres said at the May 29 Board of Education meeting.

District officials set a May 31 deadline for submitting applications. So far, 29 candidates have applied for the job, Business Administrator James Edwards said.

Edwards would not specify how many candidates were internal applicants and howmanywere fromthe outside the district.

Ceres was scheduled to solicit input fromvarious community groups this week, including the Brick Township Education Association, the Brick Township Association of School Administrators, the Township Council, along with parent teacher associations and senior citizens groups.

"We want their input in terms of what we should be looking for in a superintendent," Ceres said last week.

Ceres said that information will help to create a Rubric, a set of criteria and standards used in subjective assessments, to evaluate the applications.

Ceres and Board of Education members will be responsible for reviewing the applications and selecting the first round of candidates to be interviewed.

Ceres said she is hoping to have the field narrowed to "six or seven" candidates for the first round of interviews, which are slated to begin at the end of the month.

Two or three finalists will be interviewed by mid-July, she said.

"We hope to have a permanent superintendent named before the new school year begins," Ceres said. "My stay here is limited."

The school district has been without a permanent superintendent since Thomas L. Seidenberger resigned in July 2007 to head the East Penn school district in Pennsylvania's Lehigh County.

Melindo A. Persi had been serving as the district's interim superintendent until April 29, when a reorganized Board of Education installed Ceres in the position.

Board President Daniel Woska said at the time that Persi's dismissal was in response to the district's defeated budget.

Ceres, a former Brick teacher and assistant superintendent, came out of retirement to lead the district for 135 days, until a permanent superintendent could be found.