Dr. Jim Brescia brings his experience to Paso Robles
Dr. Jim Brescia, currently the superintendent for the Cayucos School District, is slated to become the interim superintendent for the Paso Robles School District following Dr. Kathleen McNamara’s March 26 retirement announcement and June 30 departure, a year before her contract expires. Brescia will lead the district for a five month assignment; a private search firm, the school board, and teachers union are looking for a new superintendent for 2015 onwards.
Dr. Brescia will only be the Paso Robles Superintendent for the first part of the school year, in 2014. After 2015 comes, he is slated to become the county superintendent, following the current county superintendent Dr. Julian Crocker’s retirement.
“I think its important for the public to know all the great things that are going on at Paso Robles School District and I really want to focus on highlighting those,” said Brescia. “There’s just a lot of great teachers and programs, a lot of wonderful students in the district and I want to focus on those.”
While Dr. Brescia will reside at the Paso Robles School District, the district will be searching for a new superintendent to take over in 2015.
The district has employed the help of a search firm to help narrow down the right person for the job. “The interested party submits their application to the search firm, who then filters the applicants based on qualification levels and characteristics as defined by input from the community, school staff, and board” according to the Director of Facility, Maintenance and Transportation for the district, Ashley Lightfoot. After a series of interviews, the “resulting ranked list of applicants is then supplies to the Board to consider, interview, and select.”
The search firm is also reaching out to the faculty members of the district to gain some insight on what the workforce wants.
“[The search firm] has actually asked teachers and everybody involved in this process to submit some responses to questions,” said Teacher Steve Arnette. “Many faculty members have responded to these, which have asked what would you recommend the new superintendent know about the history of our district, which is very important right now, what qualifications do you expect, etc.”
“The search firm has promised to include faculty members on the interview team as well, which hasn’t happened recently.” according to Arnette.
Dr. Brescia is only on contract to be the interim superintendent for the rest of 2014, with the district needing to find a permanent replacement before the start of 2015.
