Interim DeKalb County Schools Superintendent Michael Thurmond speaks at the Brookhaven
City Council’s March 26, 2013 meeting at PATH Academy. File photo obtained via Reporter Newspapers

The DeKalb County Board of Education will meet on Friday, May 1, at a location near the Atlanta airport to begin interviewing candidates to replace outgoing superintendent Michael Thurmond.

The meeting will be held at 1:30 pm at the Sheraton Atlanta Airport Hotel 1900 Sullivan Road Atlanta, GA 30337. The Board usually meets at the Central Office in Stone Mountain.

According to the meeting agenda for the May 1 meeting, the board will immediately go into a closed door meeting, called an executive session, to discuss “personnel and legal matters.” There will be another round of interviews on May 2 at 12:15 pm at the same location. Those interviews will also be conducted in executive session.

School Board Chairman Melvin Johnson said in a press release that the School Board has narrowed down the list of applicants to an unspecified number of semi-finalists. The names of those semi-finalists have not been made public. The closed-door meetings are allowed under the state’s open meetings laws.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that DeKalb County Schools received 112 applications. Once the semi-finalist interviews are completed, the School Board will select up to three finalists for private and public interviews, Johnson said.

Johnson also addressed concerns about the search firm hired to seek out candidates, ProAct. SUPES Academy, a company related to ProAct, is under investigation by the FBI over a no-bid contract it received from Chicago Public Schools.

“We are not aware of any evidence that any such allegations relate to the search in DeKalb nor do they relate to any of the candidates,” Johnson said. “While we will continue to monitor the situation, the Board is committed to the completion of the search process and the selection of DeKalb’s next Superintendent.”