A school district superintendent is the only employee of governing school board members.

He or she is hired to oversee the district administration and the district’s schools, based on district policies passed by the current and previous school board members.

But, some board members, thinking they know best, may want to have things done a certain way.

And so, they will try to force the superintendent to do it their way.

If the superintendent has weak leadership skills and the board wins, it ends up micro-managing the district, instead of leaving it up to a trained professional educator whom the board hired to run the district.

Board micro-managing of a district is a superintendent’s worst nightmare.

This scenario tends to lead to major personality conflicts and behind-the-scenes power struggles that have led to the unexpected firing of superintendents in other districts. This happen even though those terminated had earned the local parents’ respect and were well-liked by the community.

Knowing that we have multiple Type A personalities on our School Board, this looks to be the scenario which may have played out in our district last week.

We know that one of the players in this internal dispute was Dr. Josh Arnold, the erstwhile superintendent. But we, the public, may never know all the behind-the-scenes maneuvers by the power- players involved in his termination.

Dr. Arnold’s detractors can hide behind the façade of this School Board’s increasing lack of public transparency in making its decisions.

Mr. Laase may be contacted at GMLaase@aol.com