Residents offer wish list for superintendent Input will be used to create profile of ideal candidate for Phillipsburg School District. Thursday, February 21, 2008 • By DOUGLAS B. BRILL • The Express-Times PHILLIPSBURG | Irene Weller has just one question for the 24 candidates vying to be superintendent of the Phillipsburg School District. "What do you know about Phillipsburg?" Weller, a former school board member who lives in town, was among 18 district residents who offered thoughts Wednesday on the ideal traits for Gordon Pethick's replacement. Pethick left the district last month. Those who gathered at the Phillipsburg Middle School said they want a strong communicator who would nurture change and trust other administrators to do their jobs. But they mostly said they want a superintendent who understands how their town and townships work. Some suggested the candidates receive tours not only of school buildings but of the communities that fill them. "I'll be the tour guide," Helene Meissner of Phillipsburg said, raising her hand. She said the new superintendent must see firsthand that the district has "students who are living in cars and students living in million-dollar mansions. "This is going to sound worse than it is," Meissner said. "But half the teachers in our district live in Pennsylvania. They don't have a clue about what happens in our town." Problems facing the district, residents said, are overcrowding, a need for a new high school and the possible loss of the Abbott designation reserved for the state's poorest districts. Residents also said the district needs to ensure incoming high school students have equal levels of education. The New Jersey School Boards Association is overseeing the district's superintendent search. The gathering it held Wednesday night was one of four it will use to form a profile of the district's ideal leader. Teachers, administrators and the school board weighed in earlier. The profile will be used to pare down the number of candidates. The district hopes to have a superintendent picked before May and hired before July, said Joanne Borin, the school board association coordinator who emceed the sessions. George Chando, the district's director of secondary education, is acting superintendent. Pethick, who had been superintendent since 1999, resigned after the school board declined to renew his contract, which was to expire in June. He earned $148,977 last school year and an early separation agreement worth about $167,000. Reporter Douglas B. Brill can be reached at 610-759-0508 or by e-mail at dbrill@express-times.com.