Rick Carlson of SCF Educational Consultants, a company the district engaged at the end of March to help conduct the superintendent search, said seven people applied for the job, and that he had contacted Schmidt this spring to tell him about the opening.
Before becoming Waukesha’s superintendent in 1998, Schmidt worked for 23 years in the Appleton district.
“I spent 10 years there as a teacher, five years as a principal and eight years as a system superintendent,” Schmidt said, adding that his family in the Appleton area, including his wife, made the job attractive to him. “I live here and she lives there and we do weekends,” he said of his current family-work balance.