Oconee County Board of Education Chair Michael Ransom said on Friday morning that he anticipates the Board will be able to name a finalist in its search for new school superintendent by the end of the month, and possibly as early as the week of Aug. 18.
Citizens will have 14 days after that announcement to comment on the selection, Ransom said.
Ransom said it is “very likely” the Board will have a new superintendent in place by the end of September or early October.
Ransom made these comments after the Board voted to go into executive session of a called meeting on Friday, the second day of interviews the Board held with candidates for superintendent.
Ransom would not say how many of the seven candidates the Board interviewed in the first round had been invited back for the second round.
He said “that's not a hard number yet” and some of the candidates interviewed in the second round might be invited back for a third round of interviews before the Board makes a final decision.
The Board met at 8 a.m. on Thursday and at 8 a.m. on Friday (Aug. 7 and 8) in the law offices of Fortson, Bentley and Griffin, 2500 Daniells Bridge Road, and adjourned each day into executive session immediately after approving the meeting agenda.
Ransom said representatives of Georgia Leadership Associates (GLA) of Folkston, hired by the Board to assist with the search, were managing the interviews with the selected candidates in a closed area of the Fortson, Bentley and Griffin offices.
Interview With Ransom
I had asked Ransom on Thursday morning as the Board was going into executive session for a timeline on the Board’s decision about a new superintendent, and I asked him on Friday if he had revised that timeline after the first day of interviews.
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| Ransom 8/8/2025 |
“We're still looking at probably about 10 days or so,” he said. “So probably not next, not this coming week, but the following week, we'll probably have a better idea of the timeline.”
“So probably second half of August, maybe the 17th or 18th, we'll we will have something finalized by that point and be able to make an announcement,” he said. (He changed those dates to the 18th and 19th after I noted that the 17th was a Sunday.)
“So it is possible, depending on who that finalist is--we'll have to wait 14 days once we name the finalist--so very likely that in September, towards the end of September, we could have somebody in place.”
“Depending on who it is,” he said, “if they can leave wherever they are now and make it over here, we'd like to give them at least four weeks to get wherever they are kind of settled up and finished out there.”
“So it's very likely by the end of September or early October we could have somebody in place,” he said.
Communications Director Steven Colquitt said that the Board remained in executive session until 1:53 p.m. on Friday. He said the was in executive session until 12:17 on Thursday.
Applicants And Process
The Board had met for nearly four hours on July 10, eight hours on July 11, and three and half hours on July 16 at the Fortson, Bentley and Griffin offices to interview seven of the 19 applicants for the position of superintendent.
Jason Branch announced in April that he was stepping down as superintendent effective June 30. Branch had served as superintendent for 13 years.
The Oconee County Board of Education on May 5 approved a contract with GLA of Folkston to help it find the next superintendent of Oconee County Schools.
Ransom said on Friday that “Georgia Leadership is coordinating everything for us and helping do the logistics out of that.”
On May 12 the Board appointed Debra Harden to serve as interim superintendent until Dec. 31--or until a new superintendent is hired.
Video
The video below includes the public part of the meetings held by the Board on Aug. 7 and Aug. 8 and my brief interview with Ransom each morning after the Board voted to adjourn to executive session to interview the candidates.
The video of the Aug. 8 meeting comes first, since much of what Ransom had told me in the Aug. 7 session he repeated in the Aug. 8 session.
I also did a better job of keeping the hand-camera on Ransom in the second interview than in the first.
I included the video of both sessions for the record.
1 comment:
I vote for Debra Harden to stay on as Superintendent.
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