At a special meeting Wednesday, the Shawnee Mission School Board unanimously voted to tap current deputy Kenny Southwick as the interim superintendent for the 2017-18 school year.
The move came one week after the unexpected announcement that Jim Hinson would be retiring at the end of June, his fourth year with Shawnee Mission. Hinson, who was absent from Monday’s regularly scheduled board meeting, was not present Wednesday, either.
Southwick was hired as deputy superintendent for Shawnee Mission in March 2014, having spent the previous few years working as a planner on education related construction projects for ACI Boland, the Kansas City-based architecture firm that has worked on several Shawnee Mission projects over the past decade. Prior to that, Southwick spent 22 years in the Belton, Mo., School District, which has a student population of around 5,000, serving 12 years as superintendent.
Since coming to Shawnee Mission, Southwick has overseen a wave of major construction projects, including the soon-to-be-completed Center for Academic Achievement, and several new elementary school buildings financed by the $223 million bond issue approved by district voters in January 2015.
Southwick said he intended to take a measured approach to the district’s business once he assumed the superintendent’s role July 1.
“We’re going to take a deep breath,” he said. “There’s no sense is us getting into any quick initiatives that we would start under my tenure. We’re going to look at what we’re doing right now and decide what we pull the reins back on, what it is maybe we put to sleep for a while until a new superintendent comes in.”
Southwick currently has a three year contract with the district for his deputy superintendent position, but will engage in new contract negotiations with the board prior to starting the interim superintendent role.
As he has in years past, Southwick is serving as the lead negotiator for the district in the discussions with the National Education Association-Shawnee Mission about next year’s teacher contract. The district and NEA had their first negotiation session on Wednesday, during which Southwick told representatives of the teachers group that a pay freeze for the coming year was possible, as was freezing step and column movement, depending on how the school funding deliberations panned out in Topeka.
The board on Wednesday also discussed a tentative timeline for hiring a full-time superintendent. The timeline, presented by board chair Sara Goodburn, is as follows:
- July-August 2017: Issue request for proposal for superintendent search services and select firm
- September-October 2017: Conduct community engagement surveys
- October 2017: Search firm to present results of community engagement surveys to the board.
- November 2017-January 2018: Search firm recruits superintendent candidates.
- February-March 2018: Candidates interviewed by search firm and board.
- March-April 2018: New superintendent selected and announced to public.
At-large board member Brad Stratton, who called into the meeting Wednesday remotely, said that with the November elections coming up, he hoped the current board members would work to ensure that there was a process in place to get any new board up to speed on the superintendent hiring process prior to their seating in January.
