After a lengthy and rigorous search process, the Coupeville School District at last has selected its new superintendent.

The hiring was announced at a special meeting of the school board last week. Bill Myhr, currently superintendent of the Elma School District, has signed to a four-year contract to take the job being vacated by outgoing Coupeville Superintendent Suzanne Bond. Myhr will receive an annual salary of $100,500 and will start work in July.

He will also receive up to $1,500 in moving expenses.

Myhr was the board’s first choice among the remaining two finalists, edging out Anacortes School District Superintendent Don Brannam for the job. Earlier in the process, the third finalist, Harry Vanikiotis, accepted a position elsewhere and dropped out of the race.

Myhr was voted in unanimously.

Myhr (pronounced Meyer) has spent the past seven years as an administrator in Elma; for the last three years, he has been that district’s acting superintendent. He has also served in different capacities in the Ferndale and Eatonville school districts, and spent time in the mid-1980s as an exchange teacher in the Sichuan Province in the China. Myhr received his masters degree in education at Pacific Lutheran University, and was recently certified through the superintendent program at Seattle Pacific University.

At a candidate’s forum held in the Coupeville Performance Center on April 30, Myhr told the audience he “became an educator based on students’ needs, not his own.” He said that he chose to apply for the job in Coupeville because he was looking for a “student-centered community,” and that he is interested in carrying on the “good work” of the district’s current superintendent.

“The biggest resource we have is the human resource, and that’s why I find it attractive to be in Coupeville,” he said, adding that his favorite saying is “Let’s wear our buildings out, don’t let them rust out.”

Myhr, who cited Stephen Covey’s book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” as influential in his career, listed his strengths as creating community partnerships, “pushing the envelope on school programs” and fostering a caring, quality staff.

“My hobbies are school,” Myhr told the audience.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Dick Smith — a Seattle Pacific University educator who conducted the superintendent search as an independent contractor — thanked the school board for its “extra effort” in visiting the finalists’ districts in order to get a bird’s-eye view of their capabilities.

“You have acted as a veteran board,” Smith said. “For some of you that is a high compliment indeed.”