Archive: Opinions

EditorialA week ago Thursday I listened with interest to the debate at the school board meeting on choosing the next school superintendent.  Martha Laux made a compelling argument that by excluding the public from much of the search process the school board would exacerbate the community's mistrust of the board.  That has certainly been an issue for the school board in recent years.  And on a personal note I don't think they help themselves by rescheduling meetings to conflict with other local municipal meetings, as they did last week, thus making it harder for the press to cover their activities and report to the public.  

Laux's argument made me think long and hard about the trust issue.  And I have to say that over the past week of thinking about it, somewhat to my surprise, I have come to disagree with her.  To me it is more important to get the right person into the superintendent's office than the process.  If the school board can find someone they can all get behind and consistently support, then I am going to trust them more.  I don't care how they do it.

Well, I do care how they do it.  But I don't think that widespread community involvement in the hiring process is necessarily what makes it a good process.  Based on the past several years with the district spitting out administrators faster than a skeet shooter, I'd say that kind of process hasn't served us so well.

So I asked myself, what would make me trust the school board more than I do now?  I came up with two things:

• Hiring the right person, who will reach out to the community once hired, but also take control and manage the district

• School Board members support the administration publicly, while monitoring and adjusting privately

Lansing has been through the hiring process many times already.  The school board has been careful about including all the stakeholder groups.  And the result is that we're looking for another superintendent for the fourth time.  Should we be more interested in the process than the results?

I'm thinking no.  While I am not advocating a shady process, I do think that we have tried focusing on the process several times, and it hasn't worked out for us.  Stakeholders haven't been able to come to a consensus.  The school board itself couldn't agree.  The result in the past go-around is that administrators didn't feel trusted, and a kind of administrative tug of war and politicking led to fairly open distrust in public meetings and private dealings.  I don't understand exactly what we gained from that. 

And honestly, it's not as if their choice is going to be a secret.  No matter how you hire a person you don't know what they're really going to be like until they start working here.  If the school board isn't smart or honest enough to hire a good employee, then what the heck did we elect them for?  As someone who has talked to every single school board member face to face on a variety of district issues, I think they can do it.

The first step is to get the school board to agree on a candidate so that every member of the board can publicly and enthusiastically support the superintendent.  If it's the right superintendent, the school board will have done its job.  What makes me distrust the board at the moment is the nagging feeling that they have not been doing that.  If it's the wrong superintendent, there are measures that can be taken by the board, or by the community, for that matter.  New board members are elected all the time -- that's how we adjust when we don't think things are going well -- or when we do.

In fact, we just did that.  Two new school board members were sworn in a week ago.  As a community I think we should give them and everyone on the board a chance to solve the considerable problems and challenges the district now faces.  The first of those is to hire leadership.  The second is to do whatever it takes to keep good leaders here.

The means to an end is certainly important.  But a process that gets so bogged down that it can't yield a satisfactory result is worse -- at least I think in this case -- than one that speeds things along but yields a beneficial result for the whole community.  Clearly we as a community haven't learned from past mistakes.  I think it is time to try something new.

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