The search for Riverhead Central School District’s next superintendent is now underway.

The Riverhead Board of Education has met with the official leading the search and will begin advertising for the job by early next week, officials said during a presentation and subsequent interview last night. The board hopes to have the next superintendent hired by mid-March, which will allow the superintendent to help fill other vacancies in the district’s central administration.

The search for the next superintendent, who acts as the school district’s executive director, is being led by Eastern Suffolk BOCES. Eastern Suffolk BOCES Director of Operations David Wicks, who is a former Riverhead school administrator, presented the board with an outline of the search process at Tuesday’s school board meeting.

Wicks said he met with the school board for the first time on Oct. 15 to discuss the process of choosing the next superintendent, how to publicize the search and the next superintendent’s priorities. He said a job posting for the position can be posted as early as Monday.

The position will be advertised in many places, according to Wicks, including the New York State Board of School Superintendents, the New York State School Boards Association and the New York State Association of School Administrators. It will also be sent to every BOCES in New York State.

“So potentially all of the 730-plus school districts in New York State will see that you have a superintendent vacancy for the purpose of soliciting those applications,” Wicks said.

The job will also be shared with “affinity groups” such as the Long Island Black Educators Association and the Long Island Latino Teacher Association, Wicks said.

As candidates apply for the position, Wicks will collect public information regarding the search. A survey will be directed “not just to people who are directly connected to the school, but to the community as a whole,” Wicks said. “The purpose of that community survey is to give anybody in this community the outlet to give you the information they feel they need to let you know about the superintendent search.”

Riverhead School Board President James Scudder said the survey will be available in “every language.”

Wicks said she will then work with the board to identify stakeholder groups to meet with while the position is posted. Wicks will spend about an hour with each of them and have “in-depth, open conversations about what those groups are looking for in their next superintendent,” he said. Scudder said those groups will include the district’s parent organizations, the special education parent association (SEPTA), union bargaining units that represent district employees.

Once applications are closed, Wicks will work directly with Interim Superintendent Cheryl Pedisich and Interim Assistant Superintendent for Business Marianne Cartisano to screen all applicants. In January, Wicks will meet with the school board to discuss each candidate who applied and the results of the selection process, leading to the first round of candidate interviews in mid-January. Wicks will also discuss with the board the results of the stakeholder meetings and community survey.

A second and possibly final round of interviews could be completed in early February, with an offer to the candidate delivered by mid-February and a contract negotiated and approved by the board in March, Wicks said.

“There has been a desire here for the board to have the next superintendent appointed by March 18 so that they can potentially be involved in filling any open leadership positions that you may have, with the hopes of that person starting on July 1,” said Wicks. .

Scudder said hiring a superintendent early in the year will give the district a head start on hiring people for top administrative positions.

“For an incoming superintendent … if they know they can hire (and) they have a say in who they work with in their cabinet, as opposed to (saying) these are the people you have, that might shy some Overseers away, Scudder said. “He’s like a general manager of a baseball team. They want their people, they want their coach, managers, stuff like that. It’s the same thing. But just because they would come and have a say, it doesn’t mean the council will rubber stamp it,” he added.

In addition to the superintendent position, the district’s three assistant superintendent positions are also filled by interim employees. Pedisich and Cartisano, both retired superintendents, were hired in part to help restructure the district’s administration, school board members said.

Pedisich and Cartisano were hired after former Superintendent Augustine Tornatore and Assistant Superintendent for Business Rodney Asse abruptly resigned late last year; their interim contracts were extended through the end of the current school year. Other administrators retired or left the district at the end of the previous school year; the school board took the opportunity to restructure the top positions.

At the Oct. 29 school board meeting, Central Riverhead Faculty Association President Gregory Wallace asked school board members to consider the needs of the district’s teachers in the search for the next superintendent. The union, he said, is represented on committees established to make hiring recommendations for all district administrators except the superintendent.

“We’ve had five superintendents since I’ve been put in this position, and by July 1 we’ll have a sixth,” Wallace said.

Wallace said an obsession with administrators wanting to “fix” test scores should “immediately disqualify that person from consideration.” The phrase shows the person has “the arrogance to think they can fix Riverhead,” he said.

“I want to go on the record: We don’t need someone to fix us. In fact, we need someone to support us, and a superintendent cannot support us unless he gets to know who we are, know what we do, know why we do it, and then he has to take the time to find out how we got there here. Wallace said.

The district and its students face many challenges, Wallace said. He said the district needs leaders “cut from the same cloth” as Pedisich and Cartisano, who, while he hasn’t agreed with every decision made, he has respect and admiration for.

“Ultimately, for the Board of Education, a lot rests on the selection of our next leader,” Wallace said. “We’re counting on you.”