OCALA, FL (352today.com) – The Marion County Public School Board‘s work session on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025, focused on the search process for a new superintendent for fiscal year 2026-2027.

Bill and Stacy Adams and Dr. Monica Brown from Hazard Young Attea and Associates, LLC, Schaumburg, Ill. make up the search team that will play an integral role in the recruitment process. HYA has about 130 associates nationwide. They are joining the school board as a partner in MCPS’s superintendent search.

The Adamses will be the Florida-specific contacts.

Bill Adams was a New Jersey superintendent for 36 years, and has been involved in search work since 2006, while still seated as a superintendent. He has been with Hazard, Young Attea since 2014. Stacy Adams also joined the firm around 2014 and comes from the private sector of public education.

During its 35 years the firm has done approximately 2,000 leadership searches in education. This particular team has done work in Brevard, Broward, Collier (twice, 11 years apart), Indian River and Duval counties. They’ve also led the search for the state education commissioner.

The search process

The board liaison during the search process will be Marion County Public School Board Chair Lori Conrad. HYA will also be working with Elena Martinez-Young, the executive assistant to the board, while Wantanisha Morant and Kevin Christian will be the search team’s primary contacts throughout the process.

There are four stages to the search process: engagement, recruitment, selection and transition. The first stage is engagement, which began with a planning meeting with the school board on Oct. 2. The next stage will be to bring back all of the stakeholder input, with HVA providing the school board with a leadership profile report on what HYA has learned about Marion County, while simultaneously presenting to the board a desired set of characteristics for the successor superintendent. From there, HYA would begin the actual recruitment process.

During recruitment, HYA is out in the country literally fielding applicants based on the board’s desired characteristics. Those desired characteristics will drive everything from that point on. During the recruitment process, HYA will be looking at internal and external, in-state and out-of-state applicants to try to match those desired characteristics for Marion County.

HYA won’t begin the recruitment process formally until the board approves the desired characteristics, after the survey and community input. Salary and fringe benefits will have to be defined to advertise nationally.

The position won’t be posted until MCPS considers the public input from the focus groups. That will more than likely be in late November or early December.

There will be a series of three meetings with the school board. Approximately 48 hours before the first meeting, HYA will present all of the applications and resumes, as well as five dossiers on what the recruiter refers to as slated or preferred candidates, who most closely fit the board’s desired characteristics.

Usually, the selection process will involve from eight to 10 or 12 potential candidates that most closely resemble the desired characteristics. From there, the recruiter will ask the school board to do a paper screen, and the recruiter will help the board with a process known as the Delphi Method–a structured back-and-forth communication used widely in business forecasting.

The board will then narrow the field to five to seven candidates and then begin the interview process. HYA will assist, be present, and develop questions as part of the selection process.

Once a candidate is selected the transition process will start. In the last stage, HYA does a background check, using a third-party private investigator, that will provide HYA with a complete report. The categories include criminal, civil, financial, credential verification, media review, social media review, and contract negotiations.