Some comments on a story I wrote about the school district’s decision to retain a search firm in finding a replacement for Superintendent Randy Weseman are saying it’s a waste of money, a way for the school board to buck responsibility and comparing the Lawrence school district to the struggling Kansas City, Mo., school district.School board president Craig Grant talked to me today, giving more insight into the choice to retain a firm. The basic premise is that the school board will be intimately involved in hiring the new superintendent, but a search firm’s sole job is to find viable candidates.”They’re experienced in how to go about digging to find out if candidates are a right fit for whatever community they’re searching for,” Grant said. The firm will lend a hand to board members, who really have no experience in conducting an executive search. Grant likened it to the Chamber of Commerce’s use of a search firm to find its new CEO, Tom Kern.Grant said that school board members could not properly conduct a search on their own, given that most board members are in the work force.”We can’t basically give up seven months of whatever it is we’re doing to do what’s necessary to guarantee we hire the best person for our city and our school school district,” he said.One comment theorized that an executive search would involve putting ads in newspapers or other education publications. It’s more complicated than that, Grant says.”They will have access not to just running ads in newspapers, but they’ll have access to actually talking to other superintendents,” he said, adding that search firms regularly attend regional and national school district conferences, giving them face-to-face time with administrators. “They have a network already of people they have partially screened.”Simply put, going about the search for a candidate who will stay in Lawrence for a long time on the cheap is insufficient, he said.”We are planning to do a serious, in-depth search, and we want as many qualified people to apply as possible. (Search firms) will throw a much wider net than we could do ourselves in gathering qualified” applicants.The search firms the school board’s hiring committee identified include both for-profit and nonprofit groups, including the Kansas Association of School Boards.In response to one comment, saying the board is hiring a firm simply to cover itself in case of a bad hire, Grant said, “It’s our decision to make the decision (on whom to hire), and seven people will make the decision. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll take the blame.”But by going with a search firm, Grant says the district will be able to proactively identify and recruit qualified applicants. By outsourcing the search, the board keeps its hand in the hiring cookie jar, while allowing experts to conduct the search.