By JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET — The School Committee is moving forward toward the appointment of a replacement for retiring Schools Superintendent Maureen Macera.

School Committee members Linda Majewski and Eleanor Nadeau, who are heading the search process, reported the post will be advertised in the print media on March 30 and April 6 and also listed on three public education job Web sites for a month.
The members have also identified a list of 17 school department and community members to serve on a selection committee expected to number 21 or 22 when the candidate review process begins sometime in April.
“We know we’ve had many people who want to serve and we are trying to make this as much of a community process as we can,” Majewski said while updating the rest of the panel on the search effort Wednesday night.
The report came after John Boudreau, Woonsocket Teacher Guild Vice President, questioned why no Guild officer or support staff officer had been added to the selection committee. Woonsocket Teacher Guild President Richard DiPardo, is recovering from recent coronary bypass surgery, but has participated in many other search processes in the past, he noted.
“I hope this is just an innocent oversight,” Boudreau said while asking that DiPardo or a representative also be invited to serve on the panel.
The selection committee will initially review applications submitted by interested candidates and then set up a series of interviews with them with small groups of its members, according to the Majewski and Nadeau.
 After conducting interviews, the selection committee would recommend a list of finalists for the job who would then be invited to attend an informal gathering with members of the community as a final step in the review process, according the committee members.
 “We’re trying to give everyone a role and everyone input, no one is going to be excluded from the process,” Majewski said while noting Boudreau’s concerns during her presentation.
Nadeau also pointed to that interest and stated members of the Guild would be invited to meet the finalists and offer rankings on their qualities during the informal meeting.
 A public hearing on the candidates is also being weighed and that will depend on how the final review goes, the members said.
 None of that occurred when Providence named its new superintendent of schools on Tuesday, Nadeau noted.
 “In Providence they just said here he is, like it or not,” Nadeau said.
 The School Committee will make the final decision on the selection of Macera’s replacement and hopefully will do that sometime prior to her departure in early July, according  Nadeau.
 Macera, a veteran administrator with nine years of  service to local district, earns $172,000 a year in her post but does not have the help of an a deputy superintendent as have past holders of her position.
 The committee has not yet set a range of compensation it would be seeking to pay the new appointee to the position.
 The selection committee members already selected are Middle School Principle Patrick McGee, High School Principal Lourenco Garcia., Career Center Director Lynne Bedard, City Councilwoman Suzanne Vadenais, Technology Director Jonathan Gallishaw, Facilities Director Peter Fontaine, Dorothy DeRemer, superintendent administrative assistant, Corrine Capalbo, Sandy Gasbaro, High School Librarian Diane Lafrenaye, Denise Auclair, Cindy MacNeil, Lynn Kapiskas of the Special Education Local Advisory Committee, Thomas Wrona, a retired teacher, Thomas Gray, Patricia Dubois, director of Grants and Curriculum, and Michael Ferry, head of the school department’s e-learning academy.