The pool of applicants to succeed Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District Superintendent Lewis Holloway includes at least one internal candidate, as Assistant Superintendent for Federal Programs and Operations Toriano Holloway confirmed Thursday he applied for the upcoming vacancy.
Little else is known about the applicant pool after Jim Hutto, the McPherson and Jacobson consultant leading the search, declined to comment on the number of resumes received or on potential candidates’ educational and employment backgrounds.
That information, he said, has not yet been presented to school board members but could be disclosed by trustees following a special-called school board meeting at noon Tuesday at the Greensboro Center.
At that meeting, trustees are expected to meet behind closed doors and review the entire candidate pool, select finalists and contact those applicants to schedule upcoming stakeholder meetings and their actual job interviews with the board.
The entirety of Tuesday’s meeting is expected to be held in executive session, and the overall preferred candidate list might not emerge until Wednesday if trustees are delayed in contacting with the finalists or run into scheduling issues.
School Board President Jenny Turner said she could not yet determine a specific amount of finalists that will emerge from Tuesday’s meeting since she is unaware of the total amount of candidates.
Trustees are expected to select a small group – possibly three to five finalists. A timeline posted with McPherson and Jacobson’s brochure for potential SOCSD superintendent applicants calls for interviews to be held Feb. 23-24, with the hire to follow this month.
The new superintendent will take over July 1.
“We’re a 6-A school, we have the Mississippi State University partnership school project that’s ongoing and we’re still smoothing out the issues with consolidation,” Turner said. “I think most people want someone who has had experience in a large school district similar to ours. I think people appreciated the (previously held) community stakeholder meetings. We received a lot of positive feedback from those, and I think everyone is vested in this process.”
Toriano Holloway’s background
Toriano Holloway is no stranger to superintendent searches.
Last year, he finished as a top-three finalist for Hattiesburg Public School District’s leadership position.
HPSD trustees eventually passed over SOCSD’s assistant superintendent for the job.
During that search, Lewis Holloway said the assistant superintendent has “the skill set required to be a great superintendent.”
Toriano Holloway joined SOCSD in 2012 after serving as Harrison Central High School’s principal. He holds a master’s degree and a doctorate from the University of Southern Mississippi.
He did not comment further on his application.
While Toriano Holloway looks to fill SOCSD’s leadership role, fellow Assistant Superintendent David Baggett confirmed he did not apply for the job.
Baggett, who joined the district as Starkville High School’s principal in 2014, beat 14 other candidates last year for the newly created position overseeing personnel and secondary curriculum.
Jody Woodrum, SOCSD’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, will step away from her position after June 30, the end of the academic year.
Woodrum joined the district in 2012 after working as a consultant with the educational company Scientific Learning and as an educator in the Bulloch County, Georgia, school district for 25 years, where she met and worked with Lewis Holloway.
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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