POULSBO — The opportunity to meet, greet and grill the four finalists who have been selected by the North Kitsap School District search committee to fill two of its three vacant secondary principal posts will be offered next week.

A near three-month long flurry of meetings, interviews, discussions, coordination and the NKSD search committee’s choices from the selection process has netted two finalists for each principalship at North Kitsap High School and Poulsbo Junior High. (Interviews for Kingston High School’s position begin April 28 — that process is being led by NKSD Supt. Gene Medina).

Four community meetings during the next eight days will allow the public to get to know each school’s search committee-chosen finalists during four, two-hour long public forums.

Poulsbo Junior High finalists, Matt Vandeleur and Diane Otterby, will meet with the community April 24 and 25, respectively, at the PJH library. The NKHS finalists Gregory Rayl and Kathy Prasch will meet April 26 and May 1, respectively. All meetings will start at 7 p.m.

Those attending will be encouraged to offer their opinions in writing, which will go back to the search committee and into its ultimate recommendation. Parents, students and community members played a major role during the initial selection process.

“There’s a lot to do to organize the teams that participated in the process (of selection) because we did it differently this year than we had ever done in the past,” said NKSD executive director of student support services and search committee leader Gregg Epperson. “We had three different teams of people participating on the front end, that really expanded the number participating.”

Epperson estimated that in the multitude of principal searches in the last five years there were an average 15 people involved in the interviewing process where as this year there were around 37, counting two search subcommittees, comprised of eight to 10 people, one student group and the other parent/community. Subcommittees provided input but have no authority to make a recommendation.

“There was a lot of interest at both schools in getting more people involved on the front end,” Epperson said. “Those ideas provided a redesign the process.”

That restructured process not only provided a bigger frame of input it also helped distribute the work load over a larger grouping of people as the NKSD searches for leaders during a time of massive transition.

The NKSD is readying to open KHS, remodel NKHS, reconfigure its grade level groupings and begin its transition from a traditional high school setting to small learning communities focus, all tentatively set for the 2007-2008 school year.

“Extremely,” Epperson said of how important the people chosen will be to the district’s transition. “They are the key leaders in the schools. They have a very key role in enhancing broad-based leadership within the school.”

Candidates are aware of the district’s state as well as everything that is on its plate in the near future. In fact, that was what attracted some of the combined group of more than 20 applicants, Epperson said.

Now the field for each school has been whittled to two.

After considering the recommendation from the search committee, along with absorbing input from the sub-committees and community meetings as well as his own interviewing and discussion findings, Medina will make a recommendation of selection for the PJH post to the NKSD board at their April 27 meeting.

The board should then, tentatively, make its decision and stamp the selection at the next regular meeting May 11. Also tentatively scheduled for the May 11 meeting is the superintendent’s recommendation for the NKHS principalship.