Cherie Labat secures CMSD Superintendent position

COLUMBUS, Miss.(WCBI) – The Columbus Municipal School Board has selected Dr. Cherie Labat to serve as the district’s new superintendent.

After months of searching, evaluating, and deliberating. Dr. Cherie Labat secured the position and the board is now ready to get to work.

It’s been a long, and as Columbus Municipal School Board President Jason Spears describes, daunting process to select the new face for the school district.

“Dr. Cherie Labat is the candidate that we felt in a unanimous form would be able to lead the district moving forward,” said Spears.

Labat is currently the assistant superintendent in the Bay St. Louis, Waveland School district.

Spears says the board is confident in its choice but it wasn’t easy picking between the top three candidates.

“Just a hair’s difference between each of the candidates and so to finally be able to move to this conclusion, I think is going to start the process of us building ongoing building of the momentum that we see going into the next school year,” said Spears.

In a public forum held Thursday night, residents met and spoke with all three candidates. They even voted for their favorite finalist.

The board considered those votes, before making a decision Friday afternoon.

When all of the qualifications and questions were answered, Spears believes the school leaders selected the best person for the job.

“She’s a very detailed person, looking at not just information but truly being able to look at the information from the stand point of how do you build a strategy in this silo to get progress here that may not be needed at other locations. I think that’s some thing that’s very telling of her abilities it’s also very telling about her determination to succeed not just for her self but for others around her and building that capacity internally,” said Spears.

Spears says Labat is ready to hit the ground running for the upcoming school year.

“She’s going to come in very quickly and be able to make assessments of kind of where things are at this particular point and acclimating herself not only to the community but the school district and also be able to start figuring out what things we need to get in place before we have to take up and finalize our budget that has to be approved by the latest August the 15th,” said Spears.

Labat’s first official day is July 11th.

She, along with the other candidates, left the meeting before a decision was announced.