While Dan Applegate has the least experience of the three finalists for the job of superintendent of Niles Community Schools, he is the candidate most familiar with the district.

Applegate worked in Niles for 15 years, first as a psychologist with Berrien RESA and then as the district’s director of special education and director of instruction.

Applegate said his familiarity with Niles gives him an advantage over fellow finalists Mike Pettibone and Chris Daughtry.

“I think I can hit the ground running,” said Applegate prior to his second public interview with the board of education Wednesday afternoon. “The board was behind a lot of initiatives that I helped put in place. I’m still behind those initiatives or else I wouldn’t have put them in place.

“For me the advantage is stepping in, knowing how these initiatives got started and knowing what is in place now. I will need an update on where we are now, but I will be able to have the advantage of saying, ‘I know where we’ve been, lets go forward.’ That would be a huge advantage.”

“Data teams” is one initiative Applegate helped establish. He explained “data teams” as a process where a group of teachers administer a pre-test over the content they are about to teach. This helps teachers identify what students know and develop a strategy to teach the content. Afterward, they do a post-test to see how the students learned and determine what worked, what didn’t and how best to proceed.

“It’s a continuous improvement model,” Applegate said.

With so much time spent in Niles, Applegate said he believes he would come in with instant respect and credibility among current staff.

“A lot of that has to do with how I handled myself and how I was willing to get my hands dirty with those initiatives,” he said. “I do care about kids, I care about teachers, I care about administrators and I care about the community. I think that comes across in what I did while I was here. The people that know me know that’s what I put first.”

Applegate left the district in 2013 to take a job as assessment and accreditation coordinator at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana.

He is the only finalist without experience as a superintendent.

Applegate said working as the district’s director of special education helped him prepare.

“It’s like a microdistrict,” he said. “You have your finances, your facilities, your hiring, firing and retaining of people and your personnel issues.

“I’ll have challenges just like anyone else coming in — even if they have already been a superintendent — they will just be different challenges.”

Niles began with 23 candidates to replace Interim Supt. Michael Lindley, who stepped in after former Supt. Richard Weigel resigned in February. The board interviewed six finalists last week before narrowing the list down to three and inviting them back for a tour and second-round interviews this week.

Pettibone went through the process Monday and Daughtry will visit today.