The Sonoma Valley Unified School District plans to accept applications for the superintendent position beginning next week, primarily to find if there are any strong local candidates interested in the job.
Speaking at the district’s Sept. 11 Board of Trustees meeting, Brandon Krueger — an administrator of special projects for the Sonoma County Office of Education who is assisting the board in its search for a new superintendent — said that plans call for the job to be posted on Monday, Sept. 22, and listed as “open until filled,” with consideration being given first to applications that are received by Oct. 14.
“I will be reaching out to educational leaders in Sonoma County and maybe neighboring counties, inviting them to apply,” Krueger told the board. “This doesn’t eliminate applications that might come in later, but it gives you the opportunity to see who is out there immediately or who has interest at this point.”
This approach complies with a request made by trustees during their Aug. 14 board meeting to seek local candidates before expanding the search statewide or nationwide.
The board also indicated at that meeting that it would consider hiring a qualified candidate and having them in place at some point during the 2025-26 school year, but if one is not found, it would be willing to extend the starting date to as late as July 1, 2026.
Rena Seifts began serving as acting superintendent of the district on June 9after then-Superintendent Jeanette Rodriguez-Chien resigned. Seifts was the district’s associate superintendent of business services at the time and continues to oversee that department, in addition to her superintendent responsibilities.
Her new contract with the district stipulates that she will serve as acting superintendent through June 30, 2026, “unless such employment is terminated earlier or extended pursuant to terms of the agreement.”
Krueger said the superintendent job will be listed on EdJoin, an online, nationwide job board that contains a wide range of opportunities for educators and education professionals. He said that the job will also be listed in two or three other publications, but that they would direct prospective candidates to apply through EdJoin.
The listing will appear before Krueger finishes gathering all input from stake holders on Oct. 3.
“How can we post a position when we haven’t received all the input?” he asked. “Because we know what the district needs in terms of general skills and qualifications in a superintendent. The district has done two superintendent searches in the last four years, and all that information has been validated in the conversations I have had.”
Krueger has had conversations with the school district’s leadership team, principals and administrators, as well as leaders of nonprofit organizations and businesses, and other Sonoma Valley residents. He is also meeting with community representatives, parents, guardians and student leaders.
“There is a lot of passion in this district and I’m very excited about it,” he said. “People really care about the community.”
Krueger told trustees that the qualitative data that he is obtaining in the conversations is going to help the search process.
“And it will help me develop the questions that you ask of the candidates that align with the values of the groups that I’m talking with,” he said.
While interacting with stakeholder groups, Krueger has begun asking an “empathy interview” question: “Think of a time when you had an exceptional superintendent. How did you feel about that superintendent? What were the actions and attributes of the superintendent and how did it affect the community?”
Krueger said he has found that the district will need to hire a superintendent who can “come in and nurture, and have a sense of empathy for, what the district is, what it is going through, its strengths and its needs.”