ROCKLAND, Maine — Eight candidates have applied to be superintendent of the Rockland-area school district.
Regional School Unit 13 Board Chairman Steve Roberts said Thursday that the search committee will receive the applications from Maine School Management Association and select people to meet with in preliminary interviews.
The search committee will then forward recommendations to the school board, which will conduct its own interviews.
Roberts said he hoped the board could hire someone by July 1 but said that may be optimistic.
He said he didn’t know what to expect in terms of how many people would apply. He said that potentially, there could be more applications in the mail. The deadline for applications to be postmarked was Tuesday.
Michael Wilhelm is serving as interim superintendent following the resignation in February of Lew Collins. Wilhelm will be employed on a per diem basis beginning in June.
That resignation was the culmination of more than a year of sharp divisions on the board. The board had been divided in its prior search for a superintendent in the spring and early summer of 2012.
Earlier this week, the school board in Kennebunk announced it had failed to find a candidate to hire from its initial pool and would conduct the search again.