Meridian School District Superintendent Sylvia Autry will be retiring on June, 30, according to School Board President Fred Wile, leaving amid big changes taking place within Meridian High School’s curriculum.

The high school will add a new ninth grade building and divide the school into small learning communities (SLC’s), which are specialized academic areas designed to play on students’ strengths and create enthusiasm by allowing them to focus on a specific academic area of their choice: Health, Academic Challenge, Business Technology, Visual and Performing Arts, or Traditional Studies.

School officials hope the SLC’s will help decrease drop-out rates, create closer, more effective, student-teacher relationships, and encourage students to do their best instead of just getting by.

While the SLC’s are designed to make providing students with a good education easier, they will make the search for the right superintendent a good deal more difficult.

“Sylvia has been an outstanding leader,” said Wile. “To replace her we need someone who works well with our community, is a strong leader, and has the experience and skills to work with small learning communities.”

On top of the difficulties in finding a superintendent candidate with the right skills, there will be the added difficulty of finding someone who is willing to take the job, “Superintendent is not the attractive job it once was,” said Ward 1 City Councilman Dr. George Thomas at a Council of Governments meeting Monday morning.

“It can be hard to find someone who’s willing to be superintendent because of all the guff they have to take,” said Wile.

To help with the difficult search, which must be completed within about seven months, the school district has hired a University of Mississippi firm, The Center for Education Leadership Search Services, to help with some of the hardest parts of their search.

The firm, which is actually just two men, former State Superintendent of Education Dr. Richard A. Boyd, and assistant to the chancellor at UM, Andrew P. Mullins, Jr., will search for and screen candidates, and assist the school board with interviews of those candidates that pass the screening. The firm plans to add a third member in the coming weeks.

Wile is optimistic about the firm’s ability to find an appropriate candidate, saying: “They have a lot of educational experience and contacts, both within the state and in a broader area … They may be able to recruit someone who never would have thought of the job otherwise.”

The new superintendent, whoever he or she may be, should begin the job on July 1, 2008.