After a slow start, State Board of Education Chairman Allan Taylor said the extended deadline to apply for the state’s top education job has paid off and a wave of people have since applied.
“I kinda lost track of how many people applied,” he said Friday. “All I know is I am very happy with the pool of candidates.”
The deadline to apply was Thursday and the State Board of Education committee responsible for recommending a name to the governor to fill the vacant job will meet next Wednesday. Taylor said there will not be another extension and interviews of the finalists will begin shortly after Wednesday’s meeting.
Taylor had originally said the finalists would be revealed to the media, but has since decided against that after candidates signaled they did not want their names released if they did win the nomination.
Taylor said he is hopeful a new education commissioner will be in office before the start of the upcoming school year.
Jacqueline was CT Mirror’s Education and Housing Reporter, and an original member of the CT Mirror staff, joining shortly before our January 2010 launch. Her awards include the best-of-show Theodore A. Driscoll Investigative Award from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists in 2019 for reporting on inadequate inmate health care, first-place for investigative reporting from the New England Newspaper and Press Association in 2020 for reporting on housing segregation, and two first-place awards from the National Education Writers Association in 2012. She was selected for a prestigious, year-long Propublica Local Reporting Network grant in 2019, exploring a range of affordable and low-income housing issues. Before joining CT Mirror, Jacqueline was a reporter, online editor and website developer for The Washington Post Co.’s Maryland newspaper chains. Jacqueline received an undergraduate degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University and a master’s in public policy from Trinity College.
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