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Following
the School board news has become an interesting pastime. Hopefully this
will be my last piece on that topic for a while.
I
find a strange irony in the Board's and Superintendent's internal
debate on how to handle the cuts necessary in next year's budget. I
seem to remember there was a court case recently involving our Board
vs. the Superintendent, to determine who is in charge of school
personnel decisions here in Bay County. After both sides spent oodles
of our money lawyering up, the court decided the Superintendent has the
say in matters of personnel. OK. That's well and good.
Now
here is the irony. The same Superintendent who was so concerned about
being in control of personnel is attempting to abdicate his position as
CEO when it comes to the financial matters of the district. He has
challenged the Board to go line by line in the budget and tell him what
to do in order to make the finances work for next year. I don't know
about you, but it seems to me that this is why he gets paid the big
bucks in the district.
It
is, however, pretty easy to see why he wants to take such a position.
Looking ahead, there is a chance the Superintendent will fail in his
bid for re-election this year. If that is the case, he will return to
the fishbowl as a principal somewhere in the district and once again
need to interact with what will then be his peers, not his
subordinates. He doesn't want to make any enemies. But he should have
thought of that before he decided to run the first time.
It
is clear to this writer that personnel reductions of non-teaching staff
are in order as I laid out in my review of the school budget two weeks
ago. There are tough calls to be made that will affect personnel. I
think it's time for the superintendent to do what the courts gave him
the authority to do. It's time for the axe to fall.
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