Perhaps as early as tonight, the Columbus City Council will select a new member of the Columbus Municipal School Board of Trustees.
Seven candidates, all men, have applied for the position, which came open in June when Stephen Jones resigned his seat after his election to the city council. Board members serve a five-year term.
This will be the seventh appointment to the five-member school board in five years and the fourth appointment in the past two years. There also have been four CMSD superintendents in the past five years.
While the faces have changed, the results have not.
Regardless, the make-up of the board or the person assigned to lead the district as superintendent, the city’s schools have continued to struggle: The district has been rated underperforming in each of the past four years.
We note this not to emphasize the district’s struggles, but to point out the gravity of the job that awaits the person chosen to join the board.
Some city appointments require little more than good intentions to be successful. That is not the case with the school board. Education is a complex system, with myriad rules, regulations and policies governed by local, state and federal law. The stakes are higher, too; the decisions board members make have a direct impact on thousands of school children.
As it is with every governing body, the success of the whole depends on the ability and performance of each member.
Over the past five years, we’ve seen the school board vacillate between being conciliatory and combative, largely depending on the makeup of the board and the superintendent at the time. The results speak for themselves.
Clearly, then, what is needed now is an approach that defies either of those labels.
While we make no recommendation on which candidate should be selected, we firmly believe the person chosen should be someone who is an independent thinker, who will come into the job fully aware of the responsibility of the task before him and will immerse himself in learning the intricacies of the job.
The best candidate will be someone who enters the job with no preconceptions, no agenda other than moving the district forward and no alliances that might cloud his judgment. He must be a person who is prepared to ask tough questions and demand clear, detailed answers. He must be a person who holds the superintendent and school administrators accountable for the results those decisions produce.
One appointment cannot, by itself, alter the landscape or our city’s school system. Yet one appointment can, and often does, change the dynamic of the board.
Our school’s recent history is proof that dynamic must be changed if the district is to ever escape the current cycle of failure.
If that is to happen, the decision the city council makes tonight will – for better or worse — go a long way in determining the future of our schools.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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