The search for a new school superintendent in Minneapolis is supposed to get underway this month, and the school board has started gathering suggestions from its various constituencies about what it should look for in the district's new leader.

Current Superintendent Bill Green announced before school started that he would leave the district next summer to return to teaching at Augsburg College. He will have led the district for four years, and many credit him with calming the tumultuous waters the district faced when he took over.

Last week, I interviewed four Minneapolitans with different connections to the school district about what they think the district should look for in its next superintendent.

State Sen. Patricia Torres Ray, DFL-Minneapolis, moms Joan Bechtold and Lolly Obeda, and teachers' union president Lynn Nordgren all think the district needs an experienced leader who can bring together the various factions in the district and connect with families.

The list of qualities they said the new superintendent needs was long and sometimes contradictory. But I imagine it sounds a lot like the lists of needs that the school board is hearing in its meetings on the same subject.

Here's a sampling: The district needs someone who can "marshal the political forces," has strong national education credentials, has a common-sense perspective, has been a teacher, is "ambitious but not to the point of commandeering," is local but not an internal candidate, has an extensive background in business administration, is even-handed, communicates with and knows the community well, isn't judgmental or a "top-down" leader, can inspire teachers, and has patience and understanding.

Oh, and all who apply should have "a good solid head on their shoulders."

Any takers?

"It's a tough job," said Torres Ray, who sits on the state Senate's education committee. "There is just no doubt that the board is going to go through a very challenging process to be able to find that person who is willing to work for little money and do a lot of work."

Asked what she would tell an interested candidate about the job, Bechtold said simply: "Good Luck."

Obeda, who is the co-chairwoman of the district's Area B parent council, said she's been "very fond" of Bill Green. She thinks the district needs to look for someone with a calm demeanor to continue the sense of stability that Green has instilled.

"There are so many political forces at play," she said, "that I think that the focus on our kids tends to get overlooked. There have been so many different factions constantly in play in the process that it surprises me that they have time to work on the real issues."

It's been a year of change for the Minneapolis School District, which is the state's third-largest with 32,000 students. The district recently approved a major downsizing plan that will close four schools in 2010 and transform the way that students will be assigned to schools. It could end up affecting up to one-fifth of the district's students. The district, which has faced years of declining enrollment, had to deal with a $28 million deficit for this school year.

Torres Ray believes the district needs a very good administrator to deal with such issues.

"The district is very complex," she said. "It's a district that is facing significant challenges in terms of budget, in terms of population decline and population change, and we serve children from many different backgrounds."

Nordgren, president of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, said that the district's new superintendent really needs to be able to communicate with teachers. She also wants someone with experience.

"We are at such a critical crossroads that we can't really experiment with somebody that has never been a superintendent."

She also said the new superintendent needs to understand that his or her life is "pretty much going be consumed morning, noon and night with this job."

"We're also really diverse in nature, and to know and understand the community and the political landscape is just essential," she said. "If that's not something they think they can handle -- if they're not a big-picture thinker -- it probably isn't the job for them."

Unlike the others I interviewed, Bechtold was not a fan of Green's performance as superintendent. In fact, she doesn't think the school board should hire any internal candidate because she's unhappy with recent moves the district has made, such as pushing the International Baccalaureate program into more schools.

She doesn't think someone in the district "can cleanse it of what seems to be a huge amount of dysfunction."

"We need somebody strong and effective that has the confidence and experience and authority, and I hope we can find them," Bechtold said. "I hope our district doesn't have too bad a reputation that people aren't going to want to come here."

"In the end, we can fret about all these details, but the main thing is just to get a really, really good superintendent."

Emily Johns • 612-673-7460