Public can meet school candidates

"Come and meet the candidates."

That invitation is being extended by the school board to all Sisters School District residents this week. From 5 to 7 p.m.Thursday, April 17, the two finalists in the district's search for a new superintendent will be in the cafetorium of Sisters High School to meet local people and answer questions.

Chairman Jeff Smith says the public "is not just invited -- encouraged" to take advantage of this opportunity. It will probably be school patrons' only direct access to the candidates before the board makes its own choice, a decision that is expected to come after the board interviews each man again Friday morning.

The two finalists have emerged from a process that began with a list of 24 applicants. Ironically, the final two are almost neighbors. Both live in Medford, even though neither works for Medford schools.

Doug Jantzi, 47, is a native of Oregon who serves as director of secondary education for Central Point schools. He began his career as a teacher of business-related subjects at North Medford High School for 10 years. After a brief following year at Treasure Valley Community College in Ontario, he then worked for two years in the Oregon Department of Education, helping to implement the 1991 state school reform law.

He was a school reform coordinator in Greater Albany Public Schools for six years before taking his current post in Central Point in 1999.

Charles Hellman, 59, is the superintendent of Rogue River School District, just a few miles up Interstate 5 from Central Point. But geographically, his career path has been quite different from Jantzi's.

Born in Brooklyn, he began teaching in New York City elementary schools. After four years in that system he moved across the country to San Francisco, where he worked as a teacher, counselor and eventually assistant principal in elementary and middle schools. He came to Rogue River High School as an assistant principal in 1989 and two years later was made district superintendent.

In the Thursday afternoon session, one candidate will be stationed in the high school band room and the other in the choir room. School board members will occupy a different site in the cafetorium and will invite visitors to share their impressions of the candidates on their way out.

All five members of the Sisters School Board made "site visits" to the candidates' home communities last week, spending a day in each district talking with a variety of people both inside and outside the school systems.

"We got very positive pictures about each of the candidates," Chairman Smith reported. "We didn't uncover any serious concerns about either of them. And certainly both of them are alive and well in our pool."

Both men have been asked to be in Sisters Thursday and Friday of this week, in part to meet the public but also to tour the three local schools (and presumably the new high school building under construction) and to check out local living conditions. Like anyone considering a job in Sisters, they are bound to be concerned about the availability and cost of housing.

The person who is finally selected -- and who accepts the terms offered by the board, including salary and benefits -- will be expected to assume office by the beginning of the next fiscal year, July 1.

He will succeed current Superintendent Steve Swisher, who officially retired in January but has agreed to work on contract through the end of the current school year to help with the transition.