PROVIDENCE — A group of business leaders, child advocates, community activists and educators will begin work this month to find a new state education commissioner.

The 14-member search committee will select up to five final candidates and advise the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education, said the board’s chairman, Robert G. Flanders, who announced the committee appointments in a news release yesterday.

Rhode Island’s education commissioner, Peter McWalters, announced this spring that he would not seek another three-year contract. McWalters will step down next July, after 17 years as the state’s top education leader, making him one of the longest serving education commissioners in the country.

“In guiding the selection of the next education commissioner, the members of this committee will have a profound effect on the future course of public education in Rhode Island,” Flanders said in a statement yesterday.

Flanders appointed two regents, Amy Beretta and Angus M. Davis, cochairs of the search committee.

The other members are: Chase Baptista, codirector of the youth group Young Voices; Elizabeth Burke Bryant, executive director of Rhode Island Kids Count; Frederick K. Butler, vice president of business ethics at Textron; William Daugherty, board member of the National Federation for Teaching Entrepreneurship; Hans Dellith, superintendent of Pawtucket Schools; Michael Magee, director of Cumberland’s Office of Children, Youth and Learning; Ramon Martinez, chief executive officer of Progreso Latino; Kathleen Mellor, 2004 national teacher of the year; Meg O’Leary, codirector of The Learning Community Charter School; Robert K. Taylor, partner at Partridge Snow & Hahn LLP; Ronald A. Wolk, founding publisher of Education Week; and Kenneth Wong, chair of the education department at Brown University.

The search committee will hold up to six public meetings by December to gather comment and input on the selection process, and will accept applications beginning in January. The state Department of Education has set aside $75,000 to hire a consultant in September “to develop, organize and manage the search process” for the search committee, said Elliot Krieger, the department’s spokesman.

The committee will recommend the finalists to the Regents in February, and the Regents will select a new commissioner by March.

According to a description by the state Department of Education, the commissioner is the executive officer of the Board of Regents and the chief administrative officer of the department, and carries out the policies and programs developed by the Regents. In addition, the commissioner is responsible for policy development, budgetary planning, legislative and executive relations, accreditation of schools, certification of educators and liaison with regional and national agencies.

The first meeting of the search committee is scheduled for Aug. 20 at 3 p.m. in Room 501 at the Rhode Island Department of Education, 255 Westminster St.

jjordan@projo.com