Just 6 people want to be Duval school superintendent. Does district need 3rd hiring search?

Will a third time be the charm for Duval County’s school superintendent search?

After the second hunt for top-notch candidates netted only six applicants to run the country’s 20th largest school system, the question could cross the minds of School Board members who were scheduled to meet next week to choose semifinalists from a pool of applicants they once hoped might number 25.

Board members talked about a third search in October, when they shut down an earlier search and pondered whether the second try would be successful.

“We can always defer again,” Board member Charlotte Joyce said last fall, when the board ended the first search that dew 10 applicants — four more than the do-over search that ended Monday night.

“We could if we needed to,” Joyce said before asking the obvious: “You know, who would want to do it?”

Board members have repeatedly praised the work Superintendent Dana Kriznar has done since stepping into the job on a temporary basis when Diana Greene retired last summer.

But Kriznar, a Jacksonville-area teacher and administrator since 1986, is herself approaching retirement age and the board wanted to find a new superintendent from a pool of deep qualifications.

Who applied to be superintendent?

Having just six applicants makes finding the ideal pick less likely, but some applicants seem to have backgrounds and big-district experience that could draw the board’s attention.

One candidate this year, Sito Narcisse, was a finalist for the superintendent’s job in 2018, when the board picked Greene instead.

He was second in charge of the 88,000-student Metro Nashville school system at that time, and in the ensuing years became superintendent of the 41,000-student school system in East Baton Rouge, La., a job he left in January. A Haitian immigrant who grew up in the New York area, he has also held important roles for school systems in places including Washington, D.C. and several Maryland suburbs.

Christopher Bernier, who applied this month days before resigning as superintendent of the Lee County school system around Fort Myers, was chief of staff for the Clark County, Nevada, district in Las Vegas before then and until 2019 was associate superintendent for Orange County schools around Orlando.

Former Lee County schools Superintendent Christopher Bernier was among the six applicants to become Duval County’s next superintendent. Provided By WCSD

“I recommend Dr. Bernier as a candidate for superintendent without reservation,” former Orange County Superintendent Barbara Jenkins wrote in a reference letter praising his “passion for student success, combined with his intellect and work ethic.”

His resume lists state Education Commissioner Manny Diaz under “personal references.” Whether he’ll still be looking for a job isn’t clear, thogh, because this week the Washoe County, Nevada, school district named him a finalist to run schools around Reno.

A third applicant, Corwin Robinson, is a former Louisiana school principal who was previously administrator for an 80,000-student Nashville district and past superintendent for a small district in Lake County, Tenn. Robinson applied in October and again when the call for candidates went out a second time last month.

Corwin Robinson, a former superintendent in Lake County, Tenn., was among six people who applied to be Duval County’s next schools superintendent. Linkedin.com

His background “was somewhat of a question mark but we felt that we could stretch that and say the individual did meet the qualifications because in Nashville, that district has 80,000 students and he was the discipline coordinator there,” Bill Vogel, a retired Florida superintendent who has worked on the Duval County candidate search for the Florida School Boards Association, told the board in October.

Other candidates for the superintendent’s post were:

∎Ronne Dotson, an 11-year superintendent of the few-thousand student district in Carter County, Kentucky. His application says the district scored in the fifth percentile of Kentucky schools when he took the job, and topped the 95th percentile when he left in 2022.

∎Carlos Perez Jr., a former schools administrator in Sotuh Florida and New York running an education reform nonprofit in Miami Beach;

∎Sylvia Mitchell, a Texas schools administrator who previously oversaw charter schools in the IDEA charter network and was a charter school principal at locations including Arlington.