With the school year nearing and many personnel out on vacation, there are still three major regional administrative positions to be filled.

The Cape Cod Collaborative conducted a search for assistant superintendent of schools beginning two weeks ago that has yielded five candidates, including three off-Island and two local applicants. None of the candidates are currently employed by the school district, Vineyard schools superintendent Dr. James H. Weiss said.

Mr. Weiss said he is finalizing the members of a search committee for that position. The committee will be made up of school committee members, principals, employees of the central office and staff members. Its first meeting was expected to be held this week.

“My goal is before the end of the month to have some interviews take place,” Mr. Weiss told up-Island school committee members last week.

Mr. Weiss is also looking to hire a director of support services, a position vacated by incoming West Tisbury school principal Donna Lowell-Bettencourt.

“I have talked already with a couple of folks who might be interested in doing that position on an interim position for a couple of months, so we won’t be without a licensed person in that position,” he said.

The director of support services is a demanding post, which school committee members have suggested splitting permanently into two jobs. “It has become pretty clear that no one can do Donna’s current job,” said Dan Cabot, member of the up-Island school committee.

Ms. Lowell-Bettencourt attended the up-Island meeting Monday for the first time as incoming principal of the West

Tisbury School. Her first day in her new job is August 12.

The position of early childhood coordinator will also be filled on an interim basis.

“My goal will be to have those positions filled by the opening of school,” Mr. Weiss said.

That may involve assigning an interim to handle the special education directorship, he said.

“In a perfect world, we would be able to hire an assistant superintendent, and reallocate two people for the special education department,” Mr. Weiss said.

In other business, the school committee received a draft of a salary matrix for administrators and non-union employees in the school district. The matrix was created with the intention of assigning pay steps to the administrators, a formula already used to calculate pay ranges for teachers.

The school committee also approved pay raises of six management and non-union employees. Susan Stevens, head of school in Chilmark, received a pay raise of three per cent, boosting her salary to $90,570. West Tisbury assistant principal Mary Boyd will receive $98,420 during the 2013-2014 school year. Incoming West Tisbury principal Donna Lowell-Bettencourt will earn $115,500.

Construction on the Chilmark School building is slated to begin in early August, announced school business administrator Amy Tierney at the Monday night meeting. Downward slopes in the land around the building have led to repeated water damage to the exterior of the building. The school district is looking to award a contract to a landscaping contractor to build a swale divet to deflect water away from the building. Four bidders have already expressed interest, including two local and two off-Island businesses, Ms. Tierney said.

The bid deadline is August 1 at 2 p.m. Work will start soon after, when Ms. Tierney awards the job. Construction should be finished by the beginning of school, though an area may be temporarily sectioned off afterward to allow the grass to grow, Ms. Tierney said.

This article has been edited to reflect the fact that West Tisbury assistant principal Mary Boyd was not hired on a temporary basis. The Gazette regrets the error.