HARTFORD — With the search for a new school superintendent narrowed to two finalists, the public will have a chance to meet the candidates at meetings next week.

Caty Sutton, Hartford’s current interim superintendent, and Jodie Stewart-Ruck, who is Mill River Unified School District’s assistant superintendent, were recommended by a 13-member ad hoc search committee including district staff, administrators, community members, students and parents that interviewed five candidates.

Stewart-Ruck will meet with the public on Monday, and Sutton on Tuesday. Each session will start at 6:30 p.m. in the Best room at the Hartford Area Career and Technical Center.

Each candidate will participate in daylong interviews early next week that will include tours of the district campuses and the town, interviews with teachers and school staff, and an evening public forum.

The five-member school board will make the final decision, with the goal of making a hire by the end of the month.

“We are confident that we have represented the interests of all stakeholders, and that the candidates we are forwarding to the board best meet the criteria for this position and possess the leadership qualities necessary to guide our district through the challenges and opportunities ahead,” search committee member Jason Hill, a White River Junction resident, told the board at a special meeting on March 7.

Along with the appropriate administrative skills, the board instructed the committee to seek a candidate who “listens, builds trust and is supportive of students, families, administrators, faculty, and staff,” committee member and Dothan Brook School Principal Rick Dustin-Eichler said by email.

They also sought a candidate who “works to understand the political issues within the community and who would be willing to learn and understand the nature of Vermont towns including tuition and public financing,” Dustin-Eichler said.

Hartford is seeking a permanent replacement for former longtime Superintendent Tom DeBalsi, who resigned abruptly last summer, a year before his contract expired.

The School Board appointed Sutton, previously Hartford’s director of secondary curriculum, instruction, and assessment, as interim superintendent in July.

The school district hired Omaha-based executive search firm McPherson and Jacobson last year when the board decided to hire a new superintendent a year early, keeping DeBalsi on the payroll. That decision prompted pushback from residents, school administrators, and the teacher’s union. The search was ultimately tabled in March as budget challenges resulted in cuts to school spending.

DeBalsi resigned on June 30, and the board later came under scrutiny when the terms of his severance package became public. After DeBalsi announced his departure, the board awarded him with a payout of nearly $250,000. He was hired in August as associate director of student support services in the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union.

After a pause in March 2024, McPherson and Jacobson resumed the search this fall. A total of nine candidates, three men and six women from six different states, applied for the job, McPherson and Jacobson consultant John Gratto said by email.

The five recommended by the committee as semi-finalists “all possessed strong experience as a principal and/or central office administrator,” Gratto said, and four of the five had “extensive experience in the State of Vermont.”

The challenge posed by logistics and cost of potentially extensive remediation of areas of the high school contaminated with harmful polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, didn’t scare off applicants, Gratto said.

“Superintendents solve and prevent problems all the time,” he said. “These two finalists have enough experience and wisdom to work through the PCB issue, as problematic as it will be.”

A full schedule of candidate interviews is posted on the distric t website: hsdvt.com.

Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan@vnews.com or 603-727-3208.