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The Sudbury Public Schools (SPS) are expected to begin preparing to launch a search for a new superintendent in an upcoming meeting. Following the departure of Superintendent Brad Crozier, Assistant Superintendent Annette Doyle will serve as Interim Superintendent for the 2026-2027 school year. That gives the SPS School Committee some flexibility on the search, but they will also need to make a series of important decisions.
Finding a new district leader is a complex, multi-step process that usually requires community involvement, careful planning, and a strict timeline. For Sudbury residents looking to understand what comes next, a review of common procedures proposed by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MASC) and others recently utilized in neighboring districts provides a clear roadmap of how these searches are typically run.
Establishing the Groundwork & Gathering Feedback
In typical processes, such as those outlined in a recent MASC search proposal, the first phase focuses heavily on preparation and community input. Initially, a school committee typically designates a search consultant and forms a dedicated search or screening subcommittee. The MASC proposal also highlights some of the process preferences that each committee will decide along the way — particularly in terms of the manner in which the search consultant might be engaged at various junctures.
Districts often launch electronic community surveys to identify local issues and priorities. Search teams can also conduct extensive focus groups and listening sessions involving parents, teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders to gather qualitative feedback. The search consultant may also perform this work on behalf of the committee.
Using this feedback, search consultants work collaboratively with the school committee to define candidate qualifications and leadership criteria. Once these criteria are finalized, an application brochure (a fancy job listing) is created to advertise the vacancy, and the job is often posted in regional or national publications.
This groundwork phase was clearly mirrored in the recent search conducted by Salem Public Schools. Salem’s timeline began with establishing an ad hoc search subcommittee, designating a search consultant, and launching community surveys in March and April before officially closing the application window in mid-April.
Screening and Interviewing Candidates
Once the application window closes, the baton typically passes to the screening committee. Composition of screening committees varies to some degree based on the preferences of the local school committee.
As demonstrated in comparable timelines, the screening committee often spends about a month reviewing applicant files and conducting preliminary, confidential interviews with semifinalists.
Search consultants help guide the screening committee in identifying the strongest candidates to become finalists. After narrowing the pool, the screening committee formally recommends a small group of finalists to the full school committee. This triggers the highly public phase of the search.
The committee will often establish a schedule for finalist visits and interviews. In the case of Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School (LSRHS), there were three finalists interviewed by the full SPS School Committee.
During this stage, finalists often participate in public forums, community meet-and-greets, and site visits where residents can interact with the candidates.
The full school committee typically holds a formal vote to hire the new superintendent after a public interview with each of the finalists. Here’s the Sudbury TV recording of the finalist interviews from LSRHS in 2023:
Some committees will solicit community feedback once again after the public finalist interviews, so there may be a small gap between the interviews and formal vote to select a Superintendent. Once a committee votes for a candidate, there’s typically a negotiating process behind the scenes to iron out contract terms.
Looking to Lincoln
Lincoln Public Schools (LPS) is a good comparison as they are a K-8 district likes SPS, and Lincoln is the only other member of the Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School. LPS completed a superintendent search in 2023, in which Sudbury Public Schools’ Interim Superintendent, Annette Doyle, was a finalist.
LPS engaged the Edward J Collins Jr. Center for Public Management to assist with their search. But the process was very similar to what MASC outlined in their proposal to Bedford. LPS also had a dedicated web page for updates to the community.
A Familiar Process: The Lincoln-Sudbury Example
Sudbury residents might find this multi-step process familiar, as it closely mirrors the approach the Lincoln-Sudbury Regional School Committee used to hire Superintendent Andrew Stephens. That search, facilitated by MASC, also incorporated community voices through surveys, listening sessions, and forums with finalists. LSRHS relied on a three-member Superintendent Search Subcommittee to facilitate the process.
That subcommittee put together a Screening Committee to review the initial applicant pool.
In that instance, the screening committee included:
- 3 School Committee Members (all from the Superintendent Search Subcommittee)
- 1 Liaison from Sudbury Public Schools
- 1 Liaison from Lincoln Public Schools
- 2 Faculty Reps
- 2 Administration Reps
- 2 Community Reps (1 from Lincoln, 1 from Sudbury)
The timeline for the LSRHS search illustrates stylistic differences in community communication. The below timeline was posted on the LSRHS School Committee’s website and offers significantly less detail than LPS offered in their timeline. This is more of an “at a glance” timeline, which emphasizes the key milestones in the process, whereas LPS opted to organize the timeline around all the action steps along the way.
As Sudbury Public Schools embarks on its own search, the School Committee will set its own timeline and design its own process. Some districts feel the best time to start a search is in the fall. Middleborough Public Schools actually solicited feedback on two different approaches to timing their Superintendent search, citing that the fall search process was more likely to produce a strong candidate pool.
Across all these example searches, it’s clear that each search process is unique in some way to the district, and much is left to the discretion of the local school committee. The SPS School Committee is expected to begin discussions about the search process in the weeks and months ahead, at which point the approach and timeline should come into focus.