The Whitefish School District board of trustees took the next step forward in the process to find a new superintendent after its current one announced his intention to retire at the school year’s finish.
Dave Means is stepping away from the role after a long career in education, including what will be six years helming the Whitefish district at the school year’s end. At the school board’s Tuesday meeting, it selected national board of education search firm McPherson and Jacobsen, LLC, to lead the search for Means’ successor.
“We chose them for a number of reasons, but the few that stood out are — they have a representative in Montana who will help us in person with a large part of the process, they have an onboarding structure to help with the transition once a superintendent is hired, and they have a very good record of superintendents staying in the position once they are hired,” Elizabeth Pitman, the board president, wrote in an email to the Beacon about the board’s choice.
Pitman said the board still has to finalize the contract with the search firm, so could not yet offer information about how much the district will pay the firm to handle the search.
According to its website, McPherson and Jacobsen, LLC, has a five-phase protocol for helping school districts select superintendent candidates. The first of those phases includes identifying the “desirable characteristics of the future superintendent,” along with establishing a timeline for the search. The search firm has been conducting searches for school boards since 1991.
The last time Whitefish Schools conducted a superintendent search before the current one was in 2020. Means did not apply for the superintendency during that process. He stepped up to do the job when the district’s search for a permanent head administrator in the district failed.
During Means’ time leading the district, he led Whitefish’s schools through the COVID pandemic and to a successful high school expansion bond last year. The district plans to break ground on the new high school and athletic complex in the spring.