'Outside Groups' Driving Away Candidates for Clayton Schools ATLANTA, GA (WABE) - Outside groups are driving away top candidates for the job of temporary superintendent with Clayton County Schools.

That's the claim of a search firm hired to identify people for the post, after the two final candidates withdrew from consideration.

Clayton's board of education wants a so-called corrective superintendent to come in short term, and help the system retain its accreditation.

But Richard Greene, who heads the candidate search, says the process has been a mess because outside groups are publicly judging those candidates without interviewing them:

GREENE: If we submit additional people to the board, are we still going to have people from the inside, as well as outside the district, working against us and working against the district?...

Greene, who's with the search firm Hazard Young and Attea, doesn't yet know if the board wants him to start the search anew.

He would not identify sources of outside pressure, but he did refer to newspaper stories in which state liaisons to the board, and the head of an accrediting organization, reportedly criticized the two finalists.

Lawyers for the school district referred WABE to board chair Ericka Davis for comment. Efforts to reach Davis were unsuccessful.
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