The Brookfield-LaGrange Park District 95 school board is expected to announce a new superintendent on Thursday, wrapping up a three-month search process.

Board members convened Sunday at the home of Thomas Powers, voting to allow board President James Landahl to enter into contract negotiations with the finalist for the position.

While the District 95 board has not revealed the name of the final candidate, Powers said that none of the semifinalists who were interviewed for the job were currently superintendents elsewhere. All of them are from the Chicago metropolitan area, he added.

“Our district is really a district that attracts people on the superintendent track, but who are not superintendents,” said Powers, citing the size of District 95.

The district includes two schools, Brook Park School in LaGrange Park, which houses grades K through five, and S.E. Gross Middle School in Brookfield, which houses grades six through eight. According to the 2008 school report card, the district serves 956 students.

The district hired the Illinois Association of School Boards to conduct a candidate search. The IASB selected eight candidates, who were interviewed and culled to three semifinalists.

Those three candidates were interviewed on May 11 by the board and two other committees made up of administrators, teachers and community members from both schools.

By the end of that session, Powers said, the finalist was pretty clear cut. Members of the District 95 school board will do a site visit to the finalist’s district this week.

District 95’s current superintendent, Thomas Hurlburt, will be leaving on June 30 to take over the reins at District 157-C in southwest suburban Frankfort.

Hurlburt has been District 95’s superintendent since 2006, and oversaw a large building renovation effort that included building a classroom addition at Brook Park and modernizing S.E. Gross School.

He was hired in 2001 as principal at S.E. Gross and was an easy choice for the District 95 board as superintendent when Hurlburt’s predecessor, Doug Rudig, left for another position in 2006.