The Rapid City community has been asked to make a significant commitment to the school district. It's a commitment of money - school taxes - that will fund a new superintendent as well as a variety of projects that are in the district's future.

And the school board has invited the community to be stakeholders in the decision making process. Seven community groups have been created to interview up to a half dozen superintendent candidates who will visit Rapid City later this spring, seeking to fill the position that will be vacated by Dr. Peter Wharton in June.

The people as stakeholders, invested in decisions well beyond the voting booth - part of the hiring and decision-making process. We're glad to see it. The process the school board is using not only creates a spirit of openness but it fosters the creation of unity for the school district's future.

Working together - the community, district employees, board and superintendent - we can accomplish great things. That's the challenge before the community and the reason this search process is so important.

Wharton, for the past decade, has played a key role in the development of the school district in Rapid City. As all superintendents do, he has set the tone for the district.

Tomorrow's challenges for the district will be as complex as yesterdays and an effective administrator will play the same key role Wharton has for the past several years.

Without unity, without some general level of consensus, tackling the largest issues won't be possible. And it's time for Rapid City to tackle the large issues as the district population swells, buildings age and technology and education changes at a rapid fire pace.

Earlier this week, the seven stakeholder groups were asked to fill out surveys discussing the qualities they expect to see in a superintendent. That will be reviewed along with their notes from the interviews themselves before a decision is finally made.

And the public is still invited to participate as active stakeholders in the process. Monday, tomorrow, will be the final day the public can fill out the survey on the school Web site -www.rcas.org - to express what they expect in the superintendent search.

We would expect many hours to be invested by the stakeholder's groups and school board members in the superintendent search.

It's time well spent; the payoff for the community and district will be significant.