The Omaha Public School Board voted Monday to appoint its new president and selected a new member.
Marque Snow will serve as the board's next president. Snow previously served as vice president on the board. He will replace current president Lacey Merica, who will now serve as vice president.
Board members selected Snow as the president after just one round of voting. Last year members voted nearly 125 times on who their next president should be and couldn’t reach an agreement. They delayed the decision after the meeting reached the early morning hours.
Snow said he's focused on finding the district's new superintendent. Last year, all finalists for the job dropped out of the running. Two candidates noted they did not feel the board showed a supportive relationship. Snow said he believes this year's board is on the right path for selecting the next superintendent to lead the district.
“Typically when you get new people that show up – we had four new board members last year – so it was different. Now, I think our board is gelling more together and I think we’re on the right path," said Snow. “We don’t know who all the applicants are. The search just closed on January 5th. Over the next couple weeks the entire board will be going through the applications and the process and we hope towards January 30th, kind of a tentative deadline, to have two finalists selected and do community interviews as well as a full board interview.”
Ricky Smith was selected by members to fill the vacant OPS seat. OPS board member Yolanda Williams unexpectedly resigned in early December 2017 after announcing she was moving out of the subdistrict she represented. Williams had served on the board for just over four and a half years.