By Katie Schubert
Omaha, NE – A good communicator, consensus-builder, and an advocate for the arts are among the qualities some members of the public want in a new Omaha Public Schools leader.
Those were identified as key characteristics during Thursday night's first public forum on the search for a new OPS superintendent. OPS superintendent Dr. John Mackiel is retiring at the end of this school year after 39 years with the district.
Dr. Marvin Edwards is a senior associate with Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates, the consulting firm assisting with the OPS search. He says public input is key to creating a leadership profile. "We don't develop it without this. Now, we know the online survey will help a lot, and we hope hundreds if not thousands of people will participate that way, but that will be a separate part of the report. We'll feed this information in to a report that we'll give back to the board, and by the extension the community because it'll be a public report, what has been told to us."
Two more public forums are scheduled. One is Friday at 7pm. The third is Saturday at 10am. Both are at the Omaha Public Schools TAC building. The OPS board is set to receive the leadership profile on December 21st.
OPS also has an online survey available for parents, staff, students, and the community to provide input on the superintendent search. That survey will be available through December 13th at www.ops.org.