Joe Jarosz
Northeast News
Jan. 15, 2016

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — A packed auditorium of parents and students at the Paseo Academy of Fine and Performing Arts got a glimpse of who their next superintendent might be.

On Thursday, Dr. Ronald Gerald Taylor, Superintendent of Willingboro Township Public Schools in Willingboro, N.J., and Dr. Mark T. Bedell, Assistant Superintendent for High Schools at Baltimore County Public Schools in Towson, Md., spent their evening fielding questions from concerned parents and school officials from a wide range of subjects, including; block scheduling, student drop-out prevention and funding. Both men spent about an hour talking and answering questions during the open forum.

Taylor and Bedell, each with about 20 years of experience in education in urban districts, are finalists for the superintendent position vacated by Dr. R. Stephen Green last summer. Taylor, while speaking to the media and during the forum, called Kansas City a “destination job” and a place he and his wife want to live.

“There’s a lot of positive momentum here,” Taylor said. “A lot of places don’t have the amenities that Kansas City has.”

Bedell noted he’s heard the concerns of “revolving door” of superintendents who come through Kansas City. But if he gets the job, he said his goal is to see his own children graduate from the KCPS system.

“When was the last time you had a superintendent put three kids into the Kansas City school system,” Bedell asked, adding that he doesn’t want to interrupt his kids’ learning experience just as much as he would hate to leave the KCPS students before finishing the job.

Although the students will have the day off, the KCPS Board of Education will not be taking off Martin Luther King Day. The Board will review feedback from the public forums on Monday and complete its decision process by the end of January, with a permanent superintendent to begin by July 1, 2016.