Chambersburg school board hires consultant for superintendent search

Chambersburg Area school board has agreed on a consultant to lead the search for a new superintendent.

The district will pay Templeton Advantage LLC $20,000 to conduct a national search for superintendent candidates and guide the interview, selection and onboarding processes.

Templeton Advantage, which is based in Pennsylvania and was founded in 2014 by a former employee of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, was among three finalists the board considered at the regular meeting on Tuesday.

The board voted unanimously to go with Templeton Advantage.

Lance Walker, Region 4 director, said the organization, led by Tom Templeton, was the most thorough of the potential consultants. Board President Mark Schur, Region 2, said Templeton is experienced, has good reviews, and offers stability.

As part of its services, Templeton Advantage offers what it calls "power sessions," professional development workshops where school board members can learn self-assessment tools and governance strategies.

"I think for where we're at right now that would be a really good move for us to take advantage of that on the front end of this process," Ben Raber, Region 8 director, said.

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What happened to the original superintendent search?

Region 6 director Ed Norcross, who was leading the superintendent search, announced at the Feb. 28 board meeting that the board was reopening the search and would request proposals from consultants to lead it.

After about six months of work that included a series of forums where the public, teachers and administrators could share what characteristics they wanted in the district's next leader, the process ground to a halt after the first round of candidate interviews because the board could not come to a consensus, he said.

Some candidates who had made it to the first round of interviews withdrew their names from consideration.

One of them was Kurt Widmann, who has been serving as acting superintendent since former superintendent Dion Betts resigned last summer. Widmann was principal at Chambersburg Area Middle School North for years before being promoted to chief academic officer in 2021.

"After consulting with family and colleagues, I have decided that it is in the best interest of the district for me to step back from the search process and to allow the board to consider other candidates," he wrote.

Originally, Norcross said the goal was to hire a superintendent at the March 28 meeting.

Betts resigned abruptly last June, two years before the end of his five-year contract. He joined the district ahead of the 2019-20 school year, and his contract was to end June 30, 2024.

The district paid him about $300,000 in severance, according to the separation agreement. The agreement included language stating neither Betts nor CASD alleged any wrongdoing by the other party.

Previously, the Chambersburg school district had not seen frequent turnover in the superintendent's office. Betts succeeded Joseph Padasak, who served 13 years through the 2018-19 school year.

Padasak followed Ed Sponseller, who led CASD from 1988 to 2006.

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Chambersburg school board meeting videos to stay online

Also on Tuesday, the school board considered revisions to a policy dealing with how long the district should keep certain records.

Included were the recordings of school board meetings the district publishes on its YouTube channel. The meetings are first livestreamed, then a recording is saved.

The policy, if approved as it was, would have required that each video be deleted once the school board has approved the minutes from the meeting that is shown. That generally takes anywhere from two weeks to a month.

For example, the video from the March 14 meeting would have been removed after the board approved that meeting's minutes on Tuesday. That was a period of two weeks. The Feb. 28 minutes were also up for approval; however, they were removed from consideration because Raber requested additions to comments he made at that meeting.

Board members agreed that videos of board meetings should stay online indefinitely. The board voted unanimously to send the policy back to the policy committee for revisions stipulating the videos be retained with no time limit.

Walker, the Region 4 director, said the videos are important in a world where misinformation runs rampant. The videos provide definitive proof of not only what was said at a meeting, but how it was said.

"When it's our voice and we said it and our body language (can be seen), I think that’s vitally important,” Wallker said.

He added the videos have helped those who don't speak English well to better understand what is being discussed at board meetings. Closed captioning can be turned on in Spanish.

Norcross, Region 6, added that streaming board meetings on YouTube was one good thing that came out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like other school boards and municipal governments, Chambersburg school board began putting meetings online when social-distancing restrictions made it impossible to host in-person board meetings.

A person will still record minutes from each meeting.

Amber South can be reached at asouth@publicopinionnews.com.