I want to thank our Superintendent, Mrs. Cindy Hughes, for her 43 years of service to the children of Georgia, mostly right here serving the children and parents of Crisp County. Mrs. Hughes 6-year tenure as Superintendent has been marked by her ability to be flexible and deal quickly and professionally with every kind of crisis. She has been diligent in her stewardship of our students, our staff, and the taxpayers’ dollars. Thank you for all you have given and done for our children.
In March, Mrs. Hughes informed this Board that the time had come for her to retire, even though she has two more years on her contract. As a Board, our preference would have been that she continue as Superintendent, but we do understand that after 43 years in the teaching profession she might believe the time has come to turn over the Superintendent’s responsibilities to someone else.
A local Board of Education is given many duties and responsibilities by the Georgia Constitution and the laws enacted by the Georgia Legislature. One of the most important of these duties and responsibilities is to employ a Superintendent. To that end, the Crisp County Board of Education posted the vacancy announcement on March 24th and invited interested applicants to submit application materials prior to the end of business on April 23rd.
When the application period was over, the members of the Board of Education reviewed and evaluated all applications based on the experience, training, leadership and management characteristics that we, as a board, had discussed and agreed were desirable in our Superintendent. We selected two applicants to interview.
We conducted interviews on May 10 for the purpose of gaining more evidence regarding the personality, professional skills and professional knowledge. Following the interviews, we spent time sharing what we believed were the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate and additional evidence of leadership and management skills we gained regarding each candidate. We listened carefully to what each member of the Board said.
In executive session on May 12th, we continued that evaluation process and came to a unanimous agreement that one candidate was the clear best choice to be Superintendent of Crisp County Schools.
It is my privilege to announce to the citizens of Crisp County and the staff of the Crisp County Schools that Dr. Brandon Williams, the current Assistant Superintendent, is the unanimous choice of the Crisp County Board of Education to be the sole finalist for the position of Crisp County Superintendent of Schools.
The law requires that we now wait 14 days before taking an official vote to employ Dr. Williams as our Superintendent. Dr. Williams has been a high school teacher, an elementary school teacher, an elementary assistant principal, a middle school assistant principal, a middle school principal, and Assistant Superintendent, all within the Crisp County Schools. He has demonstrated his ability and his knowledge in each position. He knows the strengths and weaknesses of our system. We believe he will be an excellent Superintendent.
The next 14 days is a time of public input to the process and selection decision. If you do wish to provide us with feedback, please email your comment or information to me, Joe Joe Wright at jwright@crispschools.org. I will share it with the other board members. We plan to meet again on May 28th at 6:30 p.m. for the purpose of finalizing approval of Dr. Williams contract and employment as the Superintendent.
We hope that everyone will join us in congratulating Dr. Williams and welcome him to his new role and responsibilities.