After both of its finalists dropped out, the Cape Elizabeth School Board must start all over in the search for a new superintendent to replace Meredith Nadeau, who is leaving at the end of the school year.

The goal now, according to Elizabeth Scifres, chairwoman of the School Board, is to hire an interim superintendent, who would serve the district from July 1 to June 30, 2017.

While it may not be unusual for school districts to go through more than one round while looking for a new superintendent, there is a sense of disappointment in town that the right match was not found after an intensive search process.

In a letter to the community released late last week, Scifres said, “The School Board takes its charge of finding the right match for our district very seriously and is committed to hiring the best person it can to lead the Cape Elizabeth schools.”

For that reason, the board is putting off a new search until next winter and will hire an interim superintendent simply to see the schools through the upcoming academic year.

The Cape board worked with the Maine School Management Association during its superintendent search. Cornelia Brown, the association’s executive director, said this week the association again would help Cape Elizabeth find a qualified interim superintendent.

The School Board launched its search for a new superintendent after Nadeau announced in mid-January that she would be resigning her post as head of schools in Cape to become the superintendent of the Newmarket, N.H., school district.

The board used community surveys, input from staff and administrators and a group of school staff, parents and community members to help narrow its search to two finalists.

They were Steven Bailey, who heads the Central Lincoln County School System, and Craig King, superintendent for Regional School Unit 10, which serves 12 towns including Rumford, Mexico and Dixfield.

In addition, King was also a finalist for the post of superintendent in Scarborough. However, the Scarborough Board of Education hired Julie Kukenberger to lead its schools.

Both Bailey and King were scheduled to visit Cape Elizabeth last week, but Bailey withdrew his name from consideration prior to his planned visit. King withdrew his name after spending the whole day in Cape on April 27, meeting with town and school officials, parents, school staff and students.

In a prior interview, Bailey told the Current he withdrew his name because he decided to remain in his current district, where there are a number of initiatives he would like to see through to completion.

King provided no reason for his withdrawal and told the Current he had no comment.

The Cape Elizabeth School Board meet in executive session following King’s visit, but made no decisions and had scheduled another closed-door session for last Friday. However, that meeting was canceled after King withdrew his name from consideration.

In her letter to the community on April 29, Scifres said it’s “not unusual for a school department to need more than one cycle of the search process to find a good fit,” and thanked “everyone who participated in this search for their efforts.”

In a prior interview with the Current, Scifres also said, “Ultimately it has to be a good fit for both the school district and the candidate. The superintendent of schools is incredibly important not only to the school district, but the community. Hiring a superintendent is arguably the most critical job of a school board.”

Molly MacAuslan, chairwoman of the Cape Elizabeth Town Council, said she was “disappointed for the community that we don’t have a candidate in place to move forward with,” and said that hiring an interim superintendent is not ideal.

However, she added, “I do trust the process and the School Board to do a great job in finding the right candidate for our schools and our town.”

MacAuslan was one of the members of the Town Council who met with King when he visited last week.

“I found him to be very pleasant, very personable and very professional,” she said.

Scifres did not respond to a request for further details on hiring an interim superintendent prior to the Current’s deadline Tuesday, but Brown, at the Maine School Management Association, said her staff would provide two to three names for consideration.

Brown said her group keeps a list of qualified, available people willing to serve as interim school leaders, many of whom are former superintendents from Maine and other New England states.

She said the Cape board is now “working with a fairly narrow window” for getting an interim superintendent on board for July 1, and said the board is hoping to hold interviews and announce its choice sometime this month.

Brown agreed with Scifres that it’s not unusual for school districts to hold more than one search for a new superintendent, and said about 85 percent of school districts her organization deals with go out at least twice when looking for a new head of schools.

She said the school districts in Presque Isle and Mount Desert Island, for instance, are now in the same boat as Cape Elizabeth and noted that even when Nadeau was hired five years ago, that was through a second round of candidates, as well.

Brown said that being a superintendent of schools is “undeniably a very demanding, 24/7 job” and that “never-ending mandates and shrinking resources make it doubly challenging.”

She also said that these days superintendents are expected to be not only educational leaders, but also manage multimillion-dollar budgets and hundreds of teachers and staff.

Even so, Brown has noticed an “upward trend in the number and quality of candidates for superintendent,” and said the average search usually leads to applications from between 15 and 20 candidates.

She also said it’s not only the school district that is looking for the right fit. Brown said most superintendent candidates are seeking for a good match for their individual skill sets and interests.

“You need to be very particular,” when looking for a superintendent, Brown said. “Studies show that stability in the central office leads to better student achievement. It’s not good to have leadership in flux.”

In this case, Brown added, the Cape School Board “understands the importance of getting it right, especially with high expectations from the community” for school performance.