Dear School Board Applicant:

On behalf of Board of Education President Bob Horton, Vice President Jennifer Best, David Bressman and myself, Marc Schare, thank you for applying for the vacant seat on the Worthington Board of Education. We have an outstanding field and we look forward to getting to know you and your opinions on how we can best serve the community where we live and the students who rely on our district every day.

We have set up a selection process which is detailed in this email. The process is designed to provide both the current board and the Worthington community with as much information about you as possible, and to make the selection process as public as possible.

Each of you has agreed to using email throughout this process. Please reply to this note ASAP (to marc9@aol.com) indicating that you received this email and that you have successfully downloaded the attachment. The attachment is in Microsoft Word format. If you need a different format, please let me know.

First, attached is a supplemental questionnaire that requests your views on a variety of both personal and education related topics. This is not a test and there are no right answers, the purpose of the questionnaire is to allow us and the community to understand your thoughts on our district, public education in general and why you believe you would be an asset on the board. The questionnaires are due by end of business on January 16 and we will post them on the district web site at 5pm on that date. Please send your submission to Vicki Gnezda at vgnezda@worthington.k12.oh.us and she will send your submission to each board member as it is received. 

The Board of Education will hold an executive session on January 17 to screen the applications and select a list of semifinalists. We will notify all applicants via telephone on January 18 of the results of that selection.

On Saturday, January 20, the Board will meet at the Worthington Education Center at 8:30am to hear a set of presentations regarding concepts for an alternative middle school in our district. While not related to the selection process, the semifinalists may want to attend this session, so all candidates should hold the date open if possible. A regular board meeting will follow the presentations.

On January 22, semifinalists will be invited to participate in a public forum that is similar to the school board candidates nights that are held every two years. The location and format of that event is still to be decided. At the event, the public will be invited to ask you questions and then provide their input to the board. All candidates should hold that date open as well.

On January 29, the board will meet in Executive Session and we will select a list of finalists on that date. We anticipate directly interviewing the finalists on January 30 or January 31.  We ask that all candidates try to hold January 30 and January 31 open if at all possible. In addition, those candidates that we elect to interview will be asked to undergo a routine background check. This is the same check that we ask of our district volunteers and employees, and one which was endorsed by the Columbus Dispatch in this editorial:

http://www.dispatch.com/editorials-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/12/29/20061229-A16-02.html

The board will make its final decision on or about February 5 and will formally vote at our meeting on February 12. The new board member will either be seated immediately or at our next meeting on February 26.

We realize that we are asking you to hold open a lot of dates and we appreciate your willingness to do so. Because of the number of applicants and our desire to make this a public process, we needed to build some flexibility into the schedule. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to contact me or any member of the board. My contact information is at the bottom of this email and other phone numbers and email addresses can be found here:

http://www.worthington.k12.oh.us/boardmeetings.html

Thank you again for participating in this very important process.

Regards..
Marc Schare
Worthington Board of Education
Home - 614 791-0646
Work - 614 791-0067
Cell - 614 975-4901
marc9@aol.com