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THOMAS C. TOBINThe three final candidates for Pinellas school superintendent will be announced Thursday, if all goes well.
LARGO - The Pinellas School Board will draw from a smaller than expected talent pool when it chooses a new school superintendent over the next several days.
Three names will be announced Thursday as candidates for the job, not the four or five that had been anticipated, said Bill Attea, the consultant conducting a national search for the board.
Less than 48 hours before the names were to be released, Attea said he did not know who the three candidates would be.
Attea blamed that development on Florida's open records law, and on a job market in which relatively few candidates are competing for a crop of desirable superintendent jobs. Among the others looking for top administrators is the Arlington, Va., school board, which oversees one of the nation's top systems. Attea is running the search for that district as well.
Florida's open records law requires candidates' names to be public once they become applicants.
"Some very good people just would not step into Pinellas because they thought there were other jobs they could step into and still maintain their confidentiality," Attea said.
School Board chairman Jane Gallucci said she is not concerned by the unsettled nature of the final slate. She said the board anticipated that most candidates would not want to commit to be interviewed until the last minute to preserve their anonymity as long as possible.
Gallucci said the open records law is good for most government operations but inhibits public agencies when they are buying real estate or hiring personnel. The law forces candidates to risk upsetting their current employers.
"It hurts us greatly. We knew it would," Gallucci said. "I don't know who the three candidates are, but we're keeping our fingers crossed that they're the best of the best."