He has to be a leader, but not a bully. He has to move peopl along a singular course, but only after building consensus. He has to be charismatic, without creating a cult of personality. He has to understand what we want, and want it himself.

Baltimore, along with scores of other urban centers, is looking for Mr. -- or Ms. -- Right: the school superintendent who can make this city's dreams come true.

It's a search with doubtful prospects, conducted against a backdrop of rocky marriages. The divorce rate is ever-rising; the average liaison lasts 2 1/2 years. The number of urban superintendents leaving their jobs has hit an all-time high in the past 1 1/2 years, with the number of such school districts looking for a superintendent hovering at about 20.

With education still holding center-stage on the national agenda, and frustration building over the lack of visible progress, the pressures on relationships between school boards and superintendents are intense. People demand performance, politicians' futures are at stake, and everybody's running out of patience.

All the more reason to pay detailed attention to making a good match, education consultants say.

Take notice: nobody's saying school districts should go out and find the best educator in the country. There seems to be a growing disillusionment nationally with the concept of superintendent-as-miracle-worker, the concept that some Baltimoreans say shaped the city's last choice of a schools leader.

Instead, the experts say school districts need to find the right person -- for them.

"You're miles ahead of the game if you pick the right partner because even if you have problems, you can work it through," said Floretta McKenzie, the former superintendent of the District of Columbia schools and president of the McKenzie Group, a Washington education consulting firm that conducts a lot of urban searches, including Detroit's recent search.

To make a good match, districts first need to figure out what they want and need, Ms. McKenzie and others say.

William P. Morris is president of the American Association of School Administrators, a superintendent who has conducted about 10 searches over the years for school systems looking for superintendents. Dr. Morris said he begins the process by interviewing board members to try to figure out what their district requires -- special skills in curriculum, for example, or someone who's good at community relations.

"I think there's a lot of things we can talk about that make successful marriages between husband and wife that make successful marriages between school boards and superintendents," said Dr. Morris, superintendent of the Monroe County Intermediate School District in Monroe, Michigan. "Communication. Shared goals."

Baltimore hopes to have a new superintendent in place Aug. 1, the day after Dr. Richard C. Hunter's three-year contract expires.

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke announced he had lost confidence in Dr. Hunter in December. Board members expect to announce three to five finalists next week, then begin a round of interviews which they say will include community groups, business leaders, parents and unions.

This time around, school board members, community groups and the mayor say Baltimore has a consensus on what it wants. It wants a school system built around the principal of decentralized control, in which individual schools in cooperation with their communities determine how to make learning happen and how to use their resources. This project, called "restructuring", is supposed to start on a limited basis this fall.

The emphasis on restructuring had not emerged when the city went shopping for a new schools superintendent three years ago, eventually settling on Dr. Hunter after a nationwide search. Dr. Hunter lost the support of the mayor in part because Mr. Schmoke felt Dr. Hunter did not follow through on this push toward decentralization.

"The one thing that those who are in the process say now they are doing, that wasn't done when Hunter came in, was to identify what Baltimore as Baltimore wanted for its school system," says Jo Ann Robinson, a parent who is active in the League of Women Voters' education committee. "I think maybe there was too much emphasis placed on the idea that every leader has the right to jTC expect to put his stamp or her stamp on the system."

This time around, school board members say they are looking for someone to carry out existing programs. They have expressed interest in regional candidates -- wary of educators who come to the city with a national reputation but little familiarity with the community.

That leaning is expressed in the list of five finalists for the position, which includes only two educators without links to this region. Others are from Prince George's County, the District of Columbia and Baltimore County. But even when a school system has developed a general profile of the right superintendent, the path is littered with pitfalls.

For starters, the pool of candidates available these days is shallower than ever, says Ms. McKenzie.

Many school systems, like Baltimore, are looking at assistant and associate superintendents and non-educators as well as superintendents with proven track records. But even so, Ms. McKenzie acknowledges that her personal yardstick -- narrowing search to three candidates who could all do a terrific job -- is getting harder to meet.

Some Baltimoreans express skepticism about the city's pool of semifinalists, culled from about 50 applicants meeting minimum criteria -- though at least one consultant, Ira W. Krinsky, said it was a reasonable list given current constraints.

Deputy Superintendent J. Edward Andrews, Jr. was a popular Montgomery County superintendent before becoming an education administration professor at the University of Maryland and then Baltimore's temporary operations chief. A former associate superintendent for personnel in Montgomery County, Dr. Andrews said the school system should choose a superintendent with key leadership qualities and complement those qualities with the management abilities of a deputy.

"I think it would be unlikely to find someone to do it all," Dr. Andrews said. "There's so many jobs open and the talent pool isn't that big. The deputy and the superintendent really are a tandem and they really ought to be thinking that they have two jobs to put it all together in the final analysis."

The superintendent should be the one to provide instructional leadership and rally the diverse groups that have a stake in schools, Dr. Andrews said. Dr. Hunter, for example, has been criticized for not forging strong relationships with the interests that surround schools -- parents, business, unions, community groups, the school board and the mayor.

"Don't overlook personality," says Dr. Morris of the administrators' association. "You can buy expertise. You can buy the business manager, you can buy the curriculum leader.

The superintendent has to be that general leader, has to be the leader of the team. So personality is very important. Leadership style is very important. How one relates to people is important."

But the ultimate challenge for cities searching for a leader may be getting beyond appearances. That's where the mayor, who personally intervened to choose Dr. Hunter, acknowledges erring last time.

"Dr. Hunter, in my interview with him, said all the right things," Mr. Schmoke said at a meeting last month with editors and

reporters of The Baltimore Sun. The mayor said he questioned Dr. Hunter about his commitment to restructuring and, "He agreed with that.

"In terms of philosophy, I thought I had someone with whom I was philosophically in sync," Mr. Schmoke said.

This time around, the mayor said he wants the school board to spend more time in a candidate's previous place of work. "I've learned to look beyond the words," he said.

"It needs to be like a courtship," said Meldon S. Hollis Jr., a board member who was president of the board during the last search. "You need to talk to other people, talk to people who know them, if possible people who've lived them."

Board members plan to visit the five candidates' home communities as part of the search. This could be a relatively inexpensive undertaking, given the predominance of local candidates. That's good news to those who believe such visits are essential. Omitting them, says Dr. Andrews, "can be a fatal flaw in the process.

"I don't believe interviews can provide much substantive information," he said. "Interviews are terrible for predicting what people can do. They're like letters of reference. Who do you get to write references? Your enemies?

"I still say the best evidence of how you're going to be tomorrow is how you are now," he added.

Even the most careful searches, however, can result in a disappointing candidate, Ms. McKenzie says. She still wonders about Baltimore's experience with Dr. Hunter. Ms. McKenzie said she is not alone in her assessment that Dr. Hunter was "effective" as the superintendent of Richmond schools.

"I can't explain it," she said. "I've respected his work both there and at the University of North Carolina."

"It's an art," said Mr. Hollis of the search process. "Not a science."

So Baltimore's search is fraught with anxiety. The stakes are high: small children who grow up not reading, not finishing high school and unprepared for jobs -- despite a parade of superintendents with ambitious agendas, despite consecutive reform efforts and 11 reorganizations in 15 years.

"They can't make a mistake," said Dr. Andrews. "They cannot make a mistake. You don't have that many more chances."

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