School Superintendent: Appoint or Elect?
There’s a citizen campaign developing to put a proposal on the 2008 ballot requiring the Marion County Superintendent of Schools become an appointed position rather than an elected position, as is currently the situation. Whether this gets off the ground is yet to be seen. The same proposal made the ballot in the early 1990s and failed.
Under the proposed change, the School Board would then be able to hire the Superintendent rather than him/her being elected by local voters. Obviously, there are pros and cons to having an appointed Superintendent vs. an elected one.
What do you think? Is this ballot initiative a good one?
posted by Blog Master @ 10:05 PM
26 Comments:
Why not?
Let the current guy apply and the School Board can see if he is as good a Superintendent as they can find. There might be some better possibilities for finding a Superintendent outside of Marion County.
I don't see any need to change the system for selecting a superintendent. Yancey seems to be doing a pretty good job. Having some independence from the will of the school board is also a positive in his position.
Anyone know how many Florida counties have elected School Supers. compared to appointed?
Don
(OTOW)
The county manager is appointed and that works for the County Commission. Why not give the same thing a try with the school superintendent?
Don...I looked at this a couple of years ago. Doubt there has been much change since then.
In Florida, 23 of 67 counties (34%) have elected School Superintendents. Those with appointed Superintendents are generally more urban and populated.
On a nationwide basis, it is estimated that 98% of Superintendents are appointed.
(Source: Study on School Boards done by UCF in January 2004)
http://metrocenter.ucf.edu/projects_school.php
The Board nominating won’t fly here. Just tell voters that they are going to have to pay 75%-100% more to hire a Superintindant than they do now and that will kill the idea!
You get what you pay for.
Appointed Superintendants are on contracts. In many places these contracts are very expensive. For example, salary upwards of $250K per year, all covered expenses, vehicle, full health care for self and entire family for life, etc. They institute some very good programs over the course of a few years, then, contract expires, individual moves on and taxpayers are stuck with the remains of the contract forever and paying to maintain good, but expensive, programs. I'm leaning toward elected.
I'd rather have good and expensive programs than bad and expensive ones.
The School Board hiring a Superintendent is a BAD idea! I wouldn’t trust them to hire a school bus driver—no disrespect to bus drivers meant.
Mr. Yancey is doing a great job. Now the School Board that's a different story.
The extra money required to hire a superintendent is not worth the change.
Yancey is doing a good job ???
I am curious. What facts are there to support the claim that superintendent Yancey is doing a good job ?
I am not saying that he isn't . I would like some quantification.
I come from Ohio where superitendents are appointed, advised a board on hiring one. He was perfect for the job, this was his last stop before retirement. The district was suffering from stagnation caused by tenured staff unwilling to learn new methods.
Also the teacher's union in this old union town were protecting some poor hires.
The union took their teachers out on strike, which was not popular. The result was that through mediation the union came up with much less than they demanded, actually received less than had been offered before mediation.
My point is this. It is the person chosen that makes the difference Locally no one wanted the job for obvious reasons. It would not have made any difference elected or appointed.
The fact that 98% of superintendents are appointed nationally speaks for itself.
The fact that this county has had one party rule for so long, even in a non partisan race, means you have a good chance of getting tired party line thinking.
Maybe Mr. Yancey is the right person. I can be convinced with facts.
Your turn.
Clayton Ellsworth
to Liz - So why do you say the school board is not doing a good job? Just curious.
Mr. Ellsworth - And I came from a town where the School Board was a volunteer organization; that was in the 70's. It still is. They must be doing something right as my old high school is still in the top 100 schools in the nation. Something Marion County should look at doing.
Yo, my friend Clayton.
You said "The fact that this county has had one party rule for so long, even in a non partisan race, means you have a good chance of getting tired party line thinking."
You are partially correct. This county was under the domination of the DEMOCRAT Party completely from one office to the other until Roy Abshire was elected as a County Commissioner in 1980. I believe every school board member was a Democrat until the Constitution was changed to make it non-partisan.
This situation is the chicken and the egg. In the referendums on changing Marion County to an appointed superintendent. There have been several major issues:
1. The excessive salaries that would be commanded to be "competitive" with other counties and states.
2. The excessive benefit contracts that would be commanded for the same reasons.
3. The majority of people expressing opinions publicly were seriously troubled by allowing the sitting school board to make that decision and committing the county for an expensive contract. In other words, would you allow a dysfunctional board to make that decision for the future of our schools.
4. Most people knew and know and the facts back it, that we would have had the same dysfunctional board fire their choice after about three years and we would be left holding the bag to have them make a new hire while we were paying off the contract of the last hired super.
Someone talked about volunteer school boards up “nawth”. I once worked with a state representative who did an exhaustive survey and found that 25 states have volunteer school boards, and pay them nothing except out of pocket expenses. 12 or 13 of the states pay less than $5,000. Of those remaining states, Florida ranked second as I recall, but no lower than third, in salaries paid. We pay school board members as much as we pay starting teachers, and we give school board members FULL TIME BENEFITS for a part time job, including a retirement deal twice (almost) as good as we give school teachers and other employees. That is the outrage, but after working for four years, I got no help in getting the legislature to address the issue. – because it would require the legislature to deal with their own benefit package.
This is not an issue brought on by “one party domination”, i.e. Republicans. It is a problem brought on by so many issues it would take all day to detail them all. But the answer is not allowing a dysfunctional board to make that appointment. Change the school board and maybe we will then have a referendum the public will approve. --pwf
Ohio school board members are not paid either.
It takes a very dedicated person to serve for nothing and face all the aggravation that comes with serving. The rewards are few and far between.
Campaign costs for a candidate are the same as they would be for a paid position.
In the situation that I was an advisor to, the board members were very dedicated, put in many hours at the expense of business and careers. Dedication is the key elected or appointed.
Would a school board advisery committee be of value in this situation PWF ?
One benefit of the appointment process is you get a much bigger selection to choose from. I remember we got over 40 applicants.
Still waiting for facts on Mr Yancy.
Clayton Ellsworth
Yancey's a great Super. I doubt you will find very many who will take exception to him. Maybe a few disgruntled republicans who don't feel he is enough to the right or want to ding him for supporting Kelly.
pwf- Now REPUBLICANS are virtually completely in charge. One party rule is bad either way.
No facts on Yancey, just platitudes. I am disappointed. This is a very daunting job, one which is being minimalized by lack of substance on this subject.
Why has a referendum been suggested ?
Clayton Ellsworth
The idea about appointing a Superintendent appears to have started among members of the local African American community. I have no idea why.
Anon at 4:17 said, "pwf- Now REPUBLICANS are virtually completely in charge. One party rule is bad either way.
4:18 PM, August 02, 2007"
I could not agree with you more. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Just look at Congress. The dems were outraged a year or so back when a vote was held open for three hours to make sure of the vote in a very, very close issue--drugs for us seniors I believe.
Thursday night, the Reps were outraged because the Dems now in control, stole a vote on another close issue. It as so bad, the Dems has to apologize yesterday, and then we got to watch the absolute corruption of power with John Murtha in the chair. He doesn't give a damn about the rules or the law.
--pwf
Clayton asks why a referendum has been sought. Answer is very simple. The superintendent, following the recommendations of his staff, and after his own investigation, recommended the charter school Future Leaders of America Sschool (I think that is what FLAS stood for) be closed for non perfomrance. The school's principal enrollees were Black, and the record was not good, but it was improving.
The chairman of the FLAS board, Eugene Poole, started laying the ground work for getting people to ask for another election the next day -- he called me and many others.
Frankly, I would be for an appointed superintendent if I could make the appointment. I have never seen a school board in my 50 years here I would let make that decision.
I understand the arguments for one. I also know medium and small counties have not had a good success record in Florida with appointments. Count me out.
I have looked at both sides and have to say I don't think it matters a bit one way or the other. Long as the Feds say that kids with learning disabilities get special treatment ie
you can't suspend them more than 2 weeks from buses or school meaning
NORMAL AVERAGE kids have to live by different set of rules then I don't believe there is any hope for public education. These kids with slight learning disability labels they are SPECIAL (ugh)and can't be punished the same way as NORMAL unlabeled kids. It gets worse every year and good teachers are just LIVING to retire where good teachers used to love their jobs.
Now the teachers of "honors" students still enjoy their students but then again they do not have the children with LABELS (SLD, Attn Deficit,etc) in their classes acting out with very litle consequence available to them as those students are in the mainstream blabla classes. Anyway, the FEDS have ruined public education by allowing rules for some while exempting others. Did you people know that if a child with an official "label" acts out on the bus to the point of being kicked off that the County has to send a PRIVATE CAR to their home to get them for school???? Ummm....no hope for public education. Home schooling and private schools are the wave of the future.
Appoint is by far the best method. Politicians do not make good superintendents. Their decisions should be based on whats right or wrong, not how many votes they will get or loose.
Nothing more than a power grab by Herr Crawford and Herring. What professional would want to stay more than 6 months reporting to the likes of those two. Stay with elected. Crawford already has let the power get to his head.
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