Just 21 Apply for Flagler Superintendent With 4 Days to Go, Among Them Vernon Orndorff

That’s half the number of candidates who applied in 2017, to replace Jacob Oliva, who is now state vice chancellor of education, when the position appeared as open as it is now, with no overt favorite–as had been the case in 2014, when Oliva was the clear favorite from the start. Only 20 candidates applied at the time.

Another surprise: only five candidates are from Florida, including two from Palm Coast: Earl Johnson, the only candidate from within the district–he is director of leadership and operations–and Cathy Mittelstadt, the deputy superintendent in St. Johns County Schools. Between Mittlestadt’s vast experience in a large school system from teacher, coach and dean up the administrative ranks, and her district’s reputation as Florida’s best year after year, she would have to be considered the front-runner but for a candidate from Texas who’s not entirely from Texas: Vernon Orndorff, the prodigal among the 21, a past district administrator and past favorite for the position.

Two school board members, Andy Dance and Trevor Tucker, attempted to hire Orndorff to avoid a national search in early 2017, when Orndorff was Oliva’s right-hand man in the position that Johnson holds now. Board members Janet McDonald, Colleen Conklin and Maria Barbosa blocked the move. They wanted a broader search. After they did so, Orndorff took a position in Texas, where he has family, and where he’d been assured the position of superintendent after a stint as principal (though the district numbers just 200 students).

The same five board members sit on the board now, though dynamics may have changed, with McDonald, who chairs the board, said to now favor Orndorff, which would give him a decisive advantage.

Absent additional candidates (a few always wait until the last moment, gauging their chances against those who have filed, and to delay as long as possible the public disclosure of their search), the competition will not be particularly stiff: a few candidates in experience and background clearly have more strengths than the rest. Seven are current superintendents, one is retired, but all hail from smaller districts than Flagler’s, the largest two having 4,000 and 5,000 students.

Michael Raso, superintendent of Bettendorff schools in Iowa, oversees 650 employees and 5,000 students, but he’s been embattled, with a May 2019 closed-door meeting of his school board called to “evaluate the professional competency of an individual” (meaning Raso), as a meeting notice read, even though weeks earlier the board had extended his contract unanimously. Such political maneuvering is not unusual for executives in those positions, when it doesn’t take much more than a change of wind to turn a stable position into a precarious one: Jim Tager, Flagler’s superintendent, felt the ground shift himself last year when McDonald, without warning, said it was time to look for a replacement. Tager was due to retire at the end of June, but he had not expected the discussion to start on those terms, and described himself the way colleagues and others described it: “shocked.” After briefly considering sitting out six months and returning, Tager decided against it, seeing that he no longer had the sort of air-tight confidence he would have been more comfortable with.

One of the applicants with the richer resume mirrors Tager’s situation: Yaw Obeng, currently the Burlington, Vt., district superintendent. He told his board that he would be stepping down at the end of his contract the last day of June, coinciding with Tager’s last day, to pursue other opportunities. For five years he led a district with 4,000 students, but a particularly diverse one (he uses the word “reculture” to describe some of his accomplishments): the district’s annual report features the image of three students or women, seen from the back, clasping hands in a victory sign behind a boat’s American flag; the woman in the middle appears to be wearing a Muslim veil. The annual report replicates its contact information in nine languages. Obeng, who was educated and spent most of his career in Canada, includes letters of recommendation from his own board members.

Once the application window closes, a citizen’s advisory board appointed by the Flagler School Board will meet on Feb. 4, 11 and, if necessary, Feb. 18, culling through the applications and reducing them to a short-list that it will forward to the board on Feb. 19. The board at a special meeting on Feb. 25 will then choose the candidates it will want to interview, conducting those interviews on March 5 and 6. The selection is scheduled to take place at a board meeting on March 10.

The full application packages are below.

Flagler County School Superintendent Candidates, 2020

Candidate Number(*)	The Candidates	Location	Last Position
10	Wayne Alexander	Old Lyme, Conn.	Assistant Principal
27	Jeffrey Alstadt	Crescent City, Ill.	District Administrator, Randall School District, Wis. (K-8)
8	Raymond L. Bryant, Jr.	Locust Grove, Ga.	Consultant
23	Sean Chance	Pembroke Pines, Fla.	Administrator, Pembroke Pines Charter Schools
12	George J. Chidiac [Withdrew]	Bayville, N.J.	Superintendent (2,000 students)
30	Peri-Anne Chobot	Elkridge, Md.	Prep School Principal
29	Colleen Conklin	Flagler Beach	Flagler County School Board member, Executive Director of Embry-Riddle Gaetz Aerospace Institute
28	Kim Eger	Peoria, Ariz.	Education Superintendent for Arizona Juvenile Corrections
24	Curtis Ellis	Palm Coast	Principal, Putnam Academy of Arts and Science
4	Andrei E. Ghelman	Naples, Fla.	Adjunct Professor, FGCU
21	Terence N. Hayes	Madisonville, Ky.	Retired Superintendent
15	Eric T. Jackson	Sarasota, Fla.	High School Principal
13	Earl Johnson	Palm Coast	Leadership and Operations Director, Flagler Schools
5	Matthew T. Liberatore	Chicago	Director of Professional Learning and Student Services
31	Matthew Lutz	Kill Devil Hills, N.C.	Assistant Superintendent (4,300 students)
32	Erin McMahon [Withdrew]	East Falmouth, Mass.	Adjunct Professor
14	Cathy Mittelstadt	Palm Coast	Deputy Superintendent, St. Johns County Schools
16	Carl E. Moore	New Smyrna Beach	Chemistry, AP Teacher, Father Lopez High School
3	Terry L. Nelson [Withdrew]	Sparta, Ga.	Former Administrator
18	Yaw L. Obeng	Burlington, Vt.	Superintendent (4,000 students)
2	Vernon R. Orndorff	Waxahachie, Texas	Superintendent, Milford District (200 students)
1	Anthony D. Pack	Warner Robins, Ga.	Regional Education Administrator
33	Nigel Pillay	St. Augustine	Elementary School Principal
19	Michael G. Raso	Davenport, Iowa	Superintendent (5,000 students)
22	Jeff Reaves	Edgewater, Fla.	Principal, Matanzas High School
35	Randy Shearouse	Springfield, Ga.	Superintendent (12,000 students)
9	David M. Schmittou	Grand Blanc, Mich.	District Curriculum Director
7	Eric T. Stair	loomsburg, Pa.	High School Principal
20	Bruce Thomas	Akron, Ohio	Superintendent of 3 Charter Schools (580 students)
17	Nicolas Dusan Wade	Bolingbrook, Ill.	Superintendent (3,000 students)
6	Ron Wagner	Brooklyn Park, Minn.	Associate Superintendent
34	Tenille Wallace	Flagler Beach	Elementary School Principal
11	Jeff Williamson	Show Low, Ariz.	Superintendent, Bureau of Indian Education
25	Michael Winters	Sun City, Ariz.	District Administrator, Madison District Schools (6,000 students)
26	Janet Womack	Prosper, Texas	Consultant

Candidates submitted resumes to the Flagler County school district, whose staff redacted certain information before making the resumes public. There were 21 applicants through Jan. 30. On Jan. 31, the last day of the application window, several additional applicants filed, but not immediately uploaded to the district's website. Those were added here on Feb. 3.
(*) The school board assigned a candidate number to each applicant to facilitate the selection process and blindly determine the order of interviews when that time comes.