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Search firm's secrecy taints process
Children often learn by watching adults -- unfortunately. Without lecturing or talking down to kids, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board has gone above and beyond the "three Rs" in the classroom. With their search for a new school superintendent, the capital city's top education policy-makers have offered a couple of important lessons for students.
· If you have a tough job to do, it's all right to pay someone to do the heavy lifting.
Common sense -- as well as state law -- dictates that a parish school board advertise locally when the superintendent's post is vacant, accept applications and elect the superintendent.
That's apparently too tall an order for East Baton Rouge's school leaders who hired an out-of-state headhunter firm to find and screen candidates for the job.
Rather than review applications themselves and decide who might be the best fit for the local job, East Baton Rouge School Board members allowed the consulting firm Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates to winnow a list of 45 possible contenders (31 of whom applied in writing and 14 of whom contacted HYA & Associates only verbally) to three people.
An observant pupil might draw the conclusion that it's OK to get other people to do one's work.
If the School Board can pay someone else to do the research associated with selecting a superintendent, why can't a student purchase a term paper off the Internet, do a little cosmetic work and turn it in as his own?
· If you don't want to follow the law and can't ignore it, you can probably find a way around it if you look hard and are creative.
State law and court decisions make it pretty clear that applications for public jobs are public records. But, the School Board and HYA & Associates went to great lengths to get around that.
The School Board initially stalled and delayed when The Advocate asked to see copies of the applications.
And, HYA & Associates took care to avoid creating written records on 17 oral "applicants."
HYA & Associates senior partner Dick Greene said he interviewed HYA & Associates' three finalists and others who knew them but took no notes and worked strictly from memory. Written applications from the oral applicants were produced on only the three finalists.
School Board President Roger Moser said he was not troubled that the board was not given the names of 14 secret applicants.
Moser said that if any of them had wanted to apply directly with the board, they were free to do so.
Public Affairs Research Council President Jim Brandt, who has watched the search closely, said the lack of transparency raises questions about the fairness of the process and makes it impossible for anyone to review the superintendent search.
The School Board's decision Thursday night to throw out HYA & Associates' finalists and invite acting Superintendent Charlotte Placide to be interviewed does not remove the taint from this search.
If anything, Placide's sudden emergence as the leading contender raises more questions:
Was the HYA & Associates search a sham designed to yield an unsatisfactory slate of candidates and make it easier for the School Board to hire Placide?
Or, was this a bona fide search that simply produced candidates with enough weaknesses to prompt the board to look to a dedicated, longtime employee with an exemplary history.
Without knowing who was among the secret 14, neither the board nor the public can judge if Placide is the best person available.
While HYA & Associates bombed out with its list of finalists, the search firm can still be of service.
HYA & Associates staffers displayed phenomenal memory skills. They kept track of 17 people interested in the job without putting anything in writing.
And, assuming he did his job properly, Greene apparently committed to memory the names of at least the three finalists, their contact information, their professional backgrounds, work histories, references and myriad other information. That's an impressive display of committing things to memory.
Imagine what might happen to student performance if Greene or some other HYA & Associates staffer would conduct memorization seminars in local schools. Important dates, mathematics tables and chemical formulas would be a snap.
And, the students would never forget the latest civics lesson provided by the School Board.
