At perhaps the most crucial juncture for the Hamilton County Schools since the merged system was formed in 1997, the Hamilton County Board of Education should not decide to march in place.
Today, that board will interview three candidates it has selected for interim superintendent. If it so chooses, it could turn around and make that interim superintendent the new superintendent.
That was done four years ago when school board members decided longtime administrator and then-recently named interim superintendent Rick Smith was their man.
Two of the candidates for interim superintendent, co-acting superintendent Dr. Kirk Kelly and Normal Park Museum Magnet Principal Jill Levine, are entrenched parts of the current system the public has said is broken.
Kelly, who was assistant superintendent for accountability and testing, was a part of Smith’s leadership team. When Smith needed to present numbers, the story goes, Kelly could find the numbers. And although he served as a principal at Alton Park Elementary School, where a teacher won a six-figure settlement against him for mistreatment in the late 1990s, he has not shown bold public leadership since moving into the central office.