Meeker board narrows superintendent search to two

MEEKER — Two finalists for the superintendent’s job here will be in town for interviews this weekend.
“We’re going to be interviewing on Saturday,” said Dan Evig, who is retiring as superintendent at the end of June. “Basically, we’ll sit down with the candidates, ask them questions, get to know them, tell them about our schools.”
Evig said the two finalists are Doug Pfau, who is the superintendent at DeBeque, and William Zitterkopf of Scottsbluff, Neb., who is currently in the insurance business.
The district had “about eight or nine applicants” for the superintendent’s position, who went through a screening process and background checks before the board settled on two finalists, Evig said. There were no applications from within the district, he added.
“We’ve been doing a lot of calling references, that sort of thing,” Evig said of the search. “We’ve been doing our homework before we call them in to talk to them.”
Evig said he thought the district had two qualified candidates.
“One is from Colorado and is a current superintendent, and one is from Nebraska; however, he has some superintendent experience in Colorado, on the eastern plains, which is a big plus, because he has been a superintendent in Colorado,” Evig said. “So I think we have two good candidates. We have two people who are not looking for their first superintendent’s job. They both have good experience.”
Most of the applicants were men.
“We had predominately men apply,” Evig said. “I think we had one female applicant.’
Evig announced his retirement at a school board meeting Jan. 20. He has been the superintendent for five years.
“My role in all of this is not much,” Evig said. “I can certainly help with doing background checks, that sort of thing. But the school board needs to pick the best person for the job they can find.”
Besides school board members, others from the school district as well as the community will be involved in interviewing the two finalists.
“It’s a process we’ve used to hire principals and other folks in the district,” Evig said. “So we’re following that format.”
After this weekend’s interviews, Evig said the school board “will debrief with the groups, and then there’s certain amount of time, by law, to wait, before they can offer the job.”
Evig said he expects the school board will make a decision about which way it wants to go to fill the superintendent’s job after this weekend’s interviews.
“I think the board will have a pretty good notion of which way they want to head,” Evig said. “If not, then we’ll open it up for some other candidates.”