KNIGHTDALE -- The current Wake County Board of Education majority is using bad governance practices that have been widely reported. Bad governance practices usually lead to poor decisions, some of which will be noticed sooner and some later. Placing Superintendent Del Burns on administrative leave is a poor decision that will hurt the Wake schools sooner. The board majority just does not know that - yet.
On the date you are sworn in to a nonpartisan office, thanking a political party for making it happen is bad governance. Bringing resolutions to the table without giving board members in the minority time to prepare is bad governance. Stopping the construction of a school on a site that the staffs of the Board of Education and Board of Commissioners agree is the best choice - but that you campaigned against - is bad governance.
Immediately halting a procedure (early-release Wednesdays) that helps teachers be better without asking for teacher input is bad governance. Putting the school calendar to a survey of parents and then using those results to make changes is bad governance (and terrible precedent).
And banishing the CEO (after he gave the board four months' notice to find a replacement) because you did not like that he said you were "practicing partisan politics" is really bad governance. Actually, it shows a lack of understanding of what the superintendent does on a daily basis.
Between now and July 1, the school system's administration has a full plate. Beyond the day-to-day challenges of educating 140,000 children, in the next three and a half months the system will assign all children to their schools for next year, respond to thousands of transfer requests, administer hundreds of thousands of end-of-grade and end-of-course tests, graduate about 8,000 students and start the new school year for some schools on July 1.
School board members must review and approve a $1.4 billion annual operating budget, negotiate all they can with the county commissioners, give appropriate instruction and funding to schools set to open in 2010, attend 16 graduations, hear 1,500-plus student assignment appeals and find a new superintendent.
They will be busy. And I am confident the new majority does not know how to review the budget. It is called the Superintendent's Budget for a reason - it needs a leader to develop it, explain it and sell it to the competing interests that depend on it. Appointing Donna Hargens as acting superintendent is no favor to her. On top of her day job as chief academic officer at her busiest time, she now gets to be the chief problem solver, too. The superintendent, besides trying to lead 17,000 employees primarily through a dozen direct reports and 150-plus principals, spends most of his or her time "putting out fires."
That is the nature of a large school system, and the last quarter has the most "fires." Doing both jobs well does not seem possible to me.
And finding a new superintendent will be much more difficult than the majority imagines. What I learned from my time on the board is that its members should seek well-prepared internal candidates first - hard to imagine that there will be any in a system being asked to significantly change direction.
A superintendent leads academic achievement though his or her principals. Del Burns appointed over two-thirds of the current principals, and I imagine they are believers in what they have been trained to do. So any internal candidate will be challenged to win the confidence of the principals.
An external search takes at least four months. But that presumes there will be good, interested candidates. There are not many who are capable of handling a system this size. And anyone coming from a top-25 system (WCPSS ranks 18th in size nationally) is likely to come from a system that performs worse than Wake's.
Also, potential superintendents probably will insist on a unanimous approval by the board. Does anyone think that is likely for any candidate? Why would anyone want a job that includes a 5-4 board vote on every important issue, including on themselves?
In November, voters put us on a slippery slope, and now the majority of the Board of Education is moving the system down it. Bad governance practices are moving our community slowly down that slope. The majority's next move, approving a change in assignment policy that removes poverty as a factor, is scheduled for a final vote Tuesday. When that happens, our public school system's feet will go out from under it.
Tom Oxholm was a member of the Wake County Board of Education from 1999 to 2003.
