Loggerheads

The file photo smiling faces of the current (interim) and past superintendent were in sharp contrast to their words in yesterday's Telegram and Gazette cover story. And kudos to the local daily for seeing that the story didn't die with the firing of Donna Byrnes.

First things first: it is absolutely true, as former Superintendent Caradonio says, "he had received consistently high reviews from the School Committee." It's also unfortunately true that requests for information from the administration sometimes bore a depressing resemblance to something written by Beckett. Witness, for example, last spring's request for what would happen if Question 1 passed: the answer came back four days before Election day, months after the request was filed. That's the sort of priorities that are set by the person at the top of the ladder. The relationship between that lack of respect for the School Committee and the high marks received by the former Superintendent is something that I don't understand.

The current Superintendent's way of moving forward are also a bit unclear to me: "I’d like to clear up and clean up the perception that this is happening in human resources and to come up with some steps so that this doesn’t happen again in the future," she says. Clean up the perception? It isn't a perception, though: it happened. It not only happened: it happened at her urging. As the entire thing happened because she didn't want to fire the office manager and because the human resources director had no problem with putting an entirely unqualified person into a classroom, I don't think a few steps are what we need. We need a complete and utter overhaul of the perception of those running the district.

Their own perception, that is, rather than how they are themselves perceived. I think we're doing pretty well on that.