Duluth School Board Releases Names Of Six Superintendent Candidates

March 11, 2020

Alexandra Burnley,

DULUTH, Minn. — The Duluth School Board has released the names of the six candidates who will be interviewed for the Duluth Public School District superintendent job.

The board approved the final six candidates on Tuesday.

The semifinalists were selected from 20 applicants.

The candidates are James Wagner, the superintendent of the Johnson County School District in Buffalo, Wyoming, Fabby Williams, Ph.D., the school support officer and area superintendent at Guilford County Schools in Greensboro, North Carolina, Greg Pilewski, the deputy superintendent at Queen Anne’s County Public Schools in Centreville, Maryland, Michael Funk, Ph.D., the superintendent of Albert Lea Area Schools in Albert Lea, Minnesota, John Magas, the associate superintendent of continuous improvement at the Green Bay Area Public Schools in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Ron Wagner, the associate superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The school board narrowed the field using what it calls its “Leadership Profile” that was formed using feedback collected from almost 1,500 surveys and meetings with community members.

The six candidates will be interviewed on March 19th from 4-8 p.m. and March 20th from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The public is welcome to attend the interviews that will be held at the Historic Old Central High School.

“We have a strong slate of candidates and look forward to meeting them and hearing from them next week,” Jill Lofald, the school board chair, said in a news release on Wednesday.

After next week’s round of interviews, the field of candidates will be narrowed to two or three finalists. The school board will plan those interviews between March 24th to 26th.

The school board hired a firm called BWP & Associates to help with the superintendent search. The firm did all the background research and provided information on the candidates to the board. The candidates’ names were not revealed to the board by the firm until after they were selected.