Since the departure of Principal Jeff Butts, Superintendent Telena Wright and the school board have taken multiple measures to find the best candidate to replace the position.

The administration has certain qualities that they are looking for in the new principal.

“We’re looking for a good instructional leader,” Wright said. “Someone who has a vast knowledge of technology, someone who is able to have good discipline and good attendance, someone who monitors dress code and is really in-tune with the student handbook, the rules, the regulations, and someone who is a very strong supporter of extra curricular activities, like band, athletics, and fine arts.”

The new principal would need to be able to communicate with multiple groups in the district.

“It’s important for the principal to engage with the community,” Wright said, “to be in touch with the support organizations like the Argyle Education foundation, the band boosters, the athletic boosters, and the PTAs.”

The district created the job opening after previous principal Jeff Butts announced his departure.

“We had posted the position,” Wright said, “and we had a couple of internal candidates, and over thirty external candidates, but then the board wanted to look at doing a more extensive search process with a firm from McKinney, so we have had a little bit of a redirection with that.”

Wright discussed her thoughts on the additional measure to find the best candidate.

“I’m very familiar with the firm because they do legal work for us already,” Wright said.  “I think that doing a thorough search and getting the best candidate is a very positive measure.”

The hiring process is a three-part system to gradually narrow down candidates.

“When you get a large number of applications, many times you get some that don’t meet the criteria,” Wright said. “You usually first have a phone interview with the candidate.”

In the second step, a group of faculty members and parents are allowed to express their input.

“After the phone interviews, you’ll have a committee made up of parents, teachers, Mr. Daniels and myself, a counselor, band director, or people like that,” Wright said. “They have a set of interview questions that they’ll ask each candidate.”

The final step is to examine the candidates in an actual scenario to test their skills.

“The third tier is where Mr. Daniels and I have the candidates do what we call a production task,” Wright said.  “For example, they have to look at the data for the school and make a remediation plan to address any deficiencies that the school has, and then they’ll have to do a staff development plan for the teachers so that they can understand what to do with those deficiencies.”

The district used a similar system this past summer in hiring the intermediate principal, Renee Funderburg.

“For the intermediate school, we had them write a discipline plan,” Wright said. “For the high school, we might have them do a more specific task, but they’d still have to actually produce a product and present it to us.”

Wright expressed that she was optimistic about finding the new high school principal.

“Certainly, it will be challenging to replace a long term principal like Mr. Butts,” Wright said, “but the board and I are committed to doing a thorough search for a candidate and to getting the greatest candidate there is.”