In a unanimous vote on Tuesday, March 22, Earl Kim was appointed superintendent of Stamford Public Schools. Kim and is scheduled to replace the current Interim Superintendent James A. Connelly starting in July.

The selection process began five months ago with a group of 25 candidates. The executive search firm Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates then narrowed down the choices to eight to be presented to the Board of Education. The BOE interviewed six of these applicants and presented three of them as final contenders.

In addition to being an educator for the past 28 years, Kim is also a former marine lieutenant. Before becoming a math teacher in Trenton, NJ in 1984, Kim was a Marine Corp parachutist for four years.

Kim obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Cornell University. Kim was inspired, after teaching in NJ, to go to graduate school and earned a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University in 1993.

Kim then went on to a position as an assistant high school principal in Cherry Hill, NJ for three years. This was followed by a job running the Emerson Jr./Sr. High School, in Emerson, NJ, which he did for seven years. In 2003, he became superintendent of schools in Verona, NJ for five years until he changed to Montgomery Township school district, also in NJ.

Kim left the Mongomery Township in 2012 to run the Kamehameha Schools-Kapalama in Hawaii, his home state. It is a 125-year old school for orphan, indigent, and native Hawaiian children.

On Tuesday, following his appointment, Kim met with Central Office Administrators. On Wednesday, March 30, he plans to meet with school principals. Kim said that he wanted to know “where our students are starting from… That is something I intend to know better than the numbers can tell me.”