The inside story on the county school board’s pick for superintendent – if the throwback members could have their way – was always to change the school board policy’s rules and install Rick Smith in the job. After plotting to coerce Dr. Jim Scales to relinquish the last year of his four-year contract, they’re finally poised to get their way.
They’re halfway there already. Evading the Sunshine Law by using the school board’s attorney as an intermediary, they first secretly negotiated the Scales buy-out for a sum approaching $300,000. Never mind a tattered budget with a $14 million deficit.
Their second power play came in a subsequent board meeting, when they rammed through the appointment of Smith as the “interim” superintendent.
If the pro-Smith faction approves a sneaky exception into the board’s codified policy rules tonight – and members can with the 5-4 majority they finally picked up in last fall’s school board elections – they’ll have the legal power to put Smith in the superintendent’s seat permanently. All they’ll need is a 15-day public notice for a rubber-stamp vote.
An agenda memo circulated to the school board two weeks ago by board members Mike Evatt and Joe Galloway tells the tale. It proposes to dump key provisions in the current school board policy that require the school board to use a formal national search and public selection process to name a new superintendent. And it further allows the board – supposedly in the interest of efficient operation of the school system – “to appoint a new director of schools upon 15 days public notice.”