You can, quite literally, cram all of my knowledge of the political happenings in Richmond Public Schools onto the head of a Number 2 pencil. But even I was struck by the fact that the search committee made plenty of noise about their closed process being necessary to attract the best possible national candidates.
I'm sure the new superintendant, Yvonne Braxton, brings something to the table. Experience for starters, primarily with Richmond Public Schools. But doesn't she also bring 30 years of baggage, and of being part of the very problem she's now being hired to fix?
Zachary Reid at the Times-Dispatch wasn't very delicate in his straight news indictment of the selection process for the job:
Brandon emerged as the top choice in a search that supposedly reached out nationally, though neither the board nor the committee it appointed to conduct the search produced any evidence of such. None of the candidates was named, and after a tepid attempt at transparency last summer, the board opted instead to exclude the public from the search.
The heavy lifting was done by a 15-person group of civic, business and educational leaders created by then-Chairman George P. Braxton. That group hired a national search firm to find candidates.
Braxton said then that an outside committee was preferable because it would keep the search from becoming political during an election year. At the time, three of the nine members, Braxton included, had announced they wouldn’t run for re-election. Ultimately, five of the nine seats changed.
Jewell-Sherman announced her plans for departure in early April, giving the board nearly a year to find a replacement. From the time when she actually left, July 31, state law allowed a 180-day window to fill the position with a permanent full-time replacement. The board took nearly every minute possible, officially offering Brandon the job less than four hours before the end of the work day on which the state deadline was to expire.
Thoughts?
