The Rome Board of Education unanimously approved to award a contract to the Georgia School Board Association to utilize the organization’s methods to assist them in finding a new superintendent during a called meeting Friday morning.

As Superintendent Gayland Cooper’s imminent retirement approaches, the board will need to have a new superintendent in place.

The decision will largely fall into the board members’ hands, but the GSBA will assist in finding individuals who meet the necessary criteria.

“The board sets the critera of whether or not they want someone with a doctorate, if you want someone with a six year (degree), do you want years of experience in (working in) elementary, middle or high school,” said Cooper, who will retire on Dec. 1.

Chairman of the Board Judy Sims said the board’s criteria will be based on a questionnaire or survey the GSBA will provide. She expanded on how the GSBA will help the board through the process of finding a new superintendent.

“Basically they will let us make the decisions, but they do the legwork,” Sims said. “Once we tell them the kind of person we want, the characteristics, they will advertise and select the applications and present us with three stacks.”

The GSBA, she said, will present a stack of individuals’ applications that will meet the requirements. There will be another stack comprised of applications that meet most of the requirements and a third stack of applications that won’t meet a lot of requirements.

“They’ll guide us through it,” Sims said. “They’ll do the reference checks.”

There will also be a substantial part of the process that involves the Rome community, she said.

“They’ll be providing a community survey,” she said. “It will be online for members to respond to, then they’ll guide us through the viewing and keep us abreast of all legal and ethical issues that are important for us to know in going through this process.”

The board members were optimistic that the GSBA would help them find the right person for the position.

“They did a good job before, whenever we hired Dr. Cooper,” said Vice Chairman Will Wood.