SARANAC LAKE — As Saranac Lake Central School District Superintendent Diane Fox prepares to retire in August, the SLCSD board of education is asking the community what it wants to see from the next district head.

SLCSD Board Chair Mark Farmer said this is “step one” in the superintendent search. The search is being led by Franklin-Essex-Hamilton BOCES Superintendent Dale Breault, who has coordinated these searches for several other regional districts.

There’s a public survey at tejoin.com/scroll/570623767 to get the community’s vision for the district — what staff, students, families and community members want from a leader.

Using the ThoughtExchange website, people can type out their thoughts and rate others’ thoughts. Breault said this allows the “cream to rise to the top” so he can identify the community’s shared values and priorities.

Submitted thoughts are confidential — they are shared with other participants, but the respondent’s identity is not.

The survey will be open until Nov. 6. Breault will present the results to the board afterward.

“What are the most important skills and characteristics you’d like to see in the person we hire to be the next Superintendent of Schools at Saranac Lake CSD?” the survey asks.

The survey has already been distributed through the school community. As of Thursday afternoon, it already had 94 responses.

Breault said these results will help him develop a candidate profile. This profile will be included in the advertising package soliciting applicants. The package will have information about the district, the community, the region and the ideal candidate profile.

Farmer said Fox “graciously” gave the district plenty of time and notice of her retirement, meaning they could start the search early. She’s been superintendent since the spring of 2013 and will retire in August, allowing the next superintendent to start in the 2026-27 school year.

The district has a $38.1 million budget, an enrollment of around 984 and is the largest district by geographic area in the state — about 684 square miles.

When Fox retires next August, she’ll have led the district for 13 years. Farmer said the average superintendent in New York stays for around three years, so they’ve been fortunate to have consistency for more than a decade.

Farmer’s personal desires for the next superintendent are that they stick around for a while, too, and care for the welfare of the students, staff and community they lead.

The application process will be open to anyone external or internal to the district. Whoever is hired will need to be certified in New York state.

“Anytime you change leadership at the top you’re looking at changing the district,” Farmer said.

The district is in the middle of some big projects, so it’s an important time, he said.

SLCSD has been experiencing student decline for several decades now — dipping below 1,000 on opening day this year for the first time in a long time. There was a high of more than 2,000 students in the 1970s, and even 10 years ago there were around 300 more students than now.

Earlier this year, the board set up an advisory committee to make recommendations to them on how to be more efficient with taxpayer money. Last year, a consulting firm recommended closing Bloomingdale Elementary School in the 2027-28 school year and moving all those students to Petrova Elementary

Over the summer, Fox made the decision to relocate the third, fourth and fifth grade classrooms at Bloomingdale to Petrova. The district needed to cut one classroom amid staffing cuts, funding shrinkage and the declining student enrollment. This has temporarily made Bloomingdale a pre-K to second-grade school.

Timeline

The district has a broad timeline it hopes to keep to.

Breault expects to finalize the advertising package by the end of November and start advertising in December. He plans to collect applicants through the end of January and review applicants with the board in February in a confidential first round.

The first round of interviews by the board will be confidential. Breault said he does this to get a larger pool of applicants. Keeping the names secret allows people who don’t want to make trouble at their current job to apply.

After the interviews, the board will narrow down a number of finalists to make public. They will assemble groups of stakeholders for a second round of interviews. These stakeholders will share their thoughts on the candidates to the board. Ultimately, the board makes the final decision on who gets the job.

Breault hopes to have this done by the end of March, or in early April, to give the new superintendent time to leave their job and settle in at SLCSD before classes start next year.