Worthington residents can offer their opinions on qualities they want in a new superintendent at a community advisory meeting next week.

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 12 in Room 101 of the Worthington Education Center, 200 E. Wilson Bridge Road.

"We want the community to have an opportunity to give us input at that meeting, or if someone cannot attend, we also have a survey form on the district website," said school board President Marc Schare.

The district website is worthington.k12.oh.us. Under the "Highlights" link on the home page, click on "Characteristics" to reach the survey form.

Superintendent Melissa Conrath announced she will retire in October after five years with Worthington schools.

The district hired the Educational Service Center of Ohio -- at the price of expenses only -- to conduct the search and recruit a new superintendent. Other search firms quoted the district costs that ranged from $6,500 to $23,000.

All superintendent applications are due by April 15.

Schare said the district has held three informational and input gathering meetings so far with staff members and other groups.

"What I hope to get out of the meetings and the survey are what people think are the strengths of the district and areas where we may be looking at improvement, along with the qualities in a superintendent that could get us there," he said. "The idea is for the ESC to match up applications to the profile piece."

The process of narrowing down applicants to semifinalists and finalists will depend on the number of applications received, Schare said.

"The process will be different with 10 applications instead of 50," he said. "The tentative plan is a weed-out process where we can look over the applications with ESC and weed out applicants who don't match our profile piece."

Schare said the first round of interviewing is scheduled to take place around May 2, with the second round of interviews around May 9.

He said if board members are undecided between a couple of finalists, they may hold a public forum to help them decide.

"If there is no clear favorite after the second round of interviews, we may bring two or three finalists out for a third round of interviews and questions with the public," he said.

Schare said the intent is to have a new superintendent hired by May 23.

He said the service center is actively recruiting candidates.

"If whoever they recruit chooses to apply, we will probably put them directly into the second round of interviews, but at some point, they need to formally apply," he said.