The ex-members said the board made a mistake in 2003 by not hiring a national firm to sort through a bigger pool of candidates for the top administrative slot in the 136,000-student system. Some former board members said past searches for superintendents took a broader approach than the one that resulted in Hornsby's selection.

Hornsby, who resigned May 27, is under investigation by the FBI for possible misuse of federal money. An audit released last week cited ethical lapses in awarding contracts.

Board Vice Chairman Howard Stone said he is in favor of community input on the CEO selection but that the final decision fell to board members, even with only one year left on the appointed board's mandate.

"Nobody else selects the CEO but the school board," Stone said. "We can't let this system go for a year without leadership. We'd be abdicating our responsibility if we didn't. We're still board members and we're going to govern the school system."

Marcy Canavan, a former board member in the mid 1980s who lives in Accokeek, lamented the small pool of candidates last time. She said the Maryland Association of Boards of Education, the nonprofit group tasked with finding candidates, was limited in its resources to find the most suitable contenders.

"You don't take a pool of bad candidates and choose the best of the worst," Canavan told The Gazette. "You start again."

Canavan said the board of education should move now to hire a national search firm and be cautious with its selection.

She also challenged board members to see firsthand what kind of person they may be considering as a finalist.

"Board members have got to ... get on planes and do site visits," Canavan said. "You talk to administrators, you talk to the unions and you talk to the media. You talk to those people because they know what's going on."

However, Carl Smith, executive director of MABE, said the final pool of candidates for the last selection process was robust and defended his group against critics.

"They really don't know what they're talking about unless they were on the [selection] board," Smith said. "The only ones they were familiar with were the finalists."

Smith said that the nature of Prince George's with a large, diverse school system that stretches across urban, suburban and rural areas, offered unique challenges.

"It doesn't limit the pool, it defines it," Smith said of people who might be interested in the job. "This [public education] is a big enterprise. It's always a challenge in identifying people with commensurate experience."

Smith also said the last search was national and that there was a larger pool of candidates than some think, but he declined to give a specific number, citing confidentiality reasons.

Tim Quinn, managing director of the Broad Center for Management of School Systems in Los Angeles, which trains candidates for service as superintendents, said national search firms engage both the board and community once hired.

"Search firms make it their business to know prospective candidates and they get to know their skills, talents and abilities," Quinn said. "Once they are hired, they engage the community in what they want in a superintendent and the community usually quickly comes together around the skills, talents and abilities they want."

A search firm's price, Quinn said, hovered between $30,000 to $65,000 and could take from 10 weeks to six months to find suitable candidates.

"There's almost never an absolute, perfect fit," Quinn said, adding that it was nearly impossible to find a candidate who "walked on water."

Kathy Burch, one of Canavan's colleagues on the board from the mid-'80s to early '90s, said finding a CEO who would want to come to Prince George's -- and consequently be under a microscope -- could prove difficult.

"I'm worried that we've had such negative press about the last two superintendents it could hurt," said Burch of Adelphi.

Quinn said, however, that there were many large school districts nationwide with personnel who were eager to prove they had what it took to take over the reigns in a place like Prince George's.

"Many people aspire to be the head of a large district and overall the system has a good reputation," Quinn said. "I know things have been rocky in the past five years but if the salary is right ($250,000 to $300,000) they shouldn't have any problem attracting candidates."

E-mail Guy Leonard at gleonard@gazette.net.