For the fifth time in the eighty-year history of GDS, the school is looking for a new head of school. Head of School Russell Shaw announced in March that he was going to leave GDS after his sixteenth year at school, which is at the end of the current school year. Following Shaw’s announcement, the Board of Trustees created a search committee to find a new head of school. Now, four final candidates, each vying to be the sixth head, are slated to visit the school to meet with students, teachers and administrators.
Since March, over 200 people have expressed interest in the head of school position. With the help of Isaacson, Miller—an executive search firm that also helped find Shaw in 2010—the search committee reduced the 200 number to over four finalists. The four candidates will visit GDS between Sept. 29 and Oct. 17.
The search committee will recommend a final candidate to the full Board of Trustees by early November. “We want to be as transparent as possible,” search committee co-head Donald Saelinger told the Bit. “Once we have a candidate identified and approved by the Board, we want to communicate it to the community fairly quickly.” Head of School Russell Shaw will leave his position on June 30, 2026, and the new head of school will fully transition into the position by July 1, 2026.
Co-chaired by Saelinger and Otey Smith, the search committee consists of nine people, all of whom are current and former Board members.
According to search committee member Cecilia Kang, the final four candidates are educators who come from diverse geographic, life and identity backgrounds. “They are all really smart about what lies ahead: technology and financial challenges,” Kang said. She also said that they are grateful for the opportunity to be considered for the position, and they themselves have accomplished a lot. “These are not their words, but I could tell this was dream job territory for them,” Kang said, based on how the candidates expressed excitement for the head of school position.
All five heads of school in GDS history, including Shaw, have been white. Three of the five have been Jewish. Three have been women and two men. Gladys Stern, the school’s longest-serving head of school, was the most recent woman to serve in the position; she retired in 1996.
In May, June and early August, the committee discussed the merits of 50 formal candidates—all of whom representatives from Isaacson, Miller had interviewed—and then narrowed them down to about a dozen semifinalist candidates. “That process was really good to get down to those dozen candidates,” Kang said. “We were really able to talk about each of the candidates.”
The search committee elicited feedback, which the search committee and Isaacson, Miller used to narrow down the pool of applicants, from the school community. On May 20, the search committee sent surveys to faculty and staff, students, parents and alumni to share what values and priorities the new head of school should have. The committee also met with many members of the community on campus in April and May. That included faculty and staff, parents, alumni and students “to go alongside the survey,” Saelinger said.
According to Saelinger, the survey results revealed three main priorities in a candidate. “First, the head of school needs to understand the legacy, the mission, the founding story and the focus on holistic education that GDS has fought 80 years to drive,” Saelinger said. “Second, the head of school cannot compromise on delivering academic success and creating a joyful environment. Finally, we’re looking for a really good manager: a person who can operate a school as complex as GDS.”
In mid-August, the committee met for two full days to decide on the final four candidates. All but one of the semifinalist candidates met the search committee in person during those two days. “That was not that hard,” Kang said, referring to selecting the final four candidates. “We wanted people who were the best in the nation.” She explained that the high bar set by the search committee allowed for the best candidates to stand out.
The search committee asked all the candidates the same base set of questions. “After every interview we had a debrief of what we generally thought,” Kang said. “Some people stood out more than others.” Then, after all the candidates had interviewed, the search committee members deliberated about each candidate and then voted for their top four candidates out of the dozen or so. The vote was blind: search committee members did not know whom their colleagues voted for.
The search committee is only sharing the names of the candidates to the school community, and in a Sept. 28 email, they requested community members not share information about the candidates with people outside of GDS. Some of the candidates are in jobs in education and have not publicly disclosed they are applying for the GDS head of school position. According to Kang, some are also well-known in national education.
One candidate will visit in September, and three will visit in October. “Following these meetings, community members will be asked to share their impression of each candidate via an anonymous survey, which will be important for the search committee in its evaluation,” the GDS head of school search committee wrote in a Sept. 11 email to the community.
“I would like someone who cares about the students, knows everyone by name and listens to what we have to say,” senior Nico Abbate said.
“Listening to faculty and staff, getting to know the culture of the school and having a sense of humor is really important,” Director of High School Admissions Amanda Deringer said. “We’re all just people working on behalf of the students.”
On Sept. 30, Oct. 7, Oct. 9 and Oct. 17, the school will modify the typical high school schedule to provide time for all–high school assemblies with each candidate. Three of the seven students interviewed by the Bit expressed frustration with the schedule changes because they are taking away from students’ free time. However, all seven students interviewed appreciated that students are involved in the hiring process.
“I think it’s a great process,” sophomore Ethan Hirsh said. “Just the fact that they’re letting us see these people is really cool.”
“I don’t like the process very much because it’s taking away time that students, especially upperclassmen, need to study,” junior Lawson Massey said.
“The goal is to have as many people as possible as part of the process—parents, students, alumni, faculty and staff,” Saelinger said. “The best way for the candidates to learn about GDS and the GDS community to get a sense of the candidates is by the candidates being there on campus. Email, Zoom and phone calls are not a good enough proxy for in-person engagement.”