Take Me to Your Leader, Any Leader
As nearly as I can tell, the School Board is searching ardently for a kind soul to take the members by their hands and lead them down the path of Super search-hood. Uncle Ferdy’s words are ringing in my ears, and evidently in theirs’,too. Dr. Laura’s retirement is to take effect in 60 days, which is how long the School Board has known it was going to be one Super short by nightfall of July 31. Far be it from me to suggest that it might be worth experimenting for one school year. We could see whether the wheels come off the School District if there were not a Super at the helm. The lack of a leader at the helm would not, however, be the biggest problem. The School Board, you see, would be under a therapist’s care for the whole year. Members would be bumping into each other in the dark, groping, trying to determine where they should dispense those weekly raises they pull out of a bag marked “Taking Care of Super Claus.”
What Is the Starting Point?
Although, heaven knows, nothing is official, the School Board seems ready to huddle next week with representatives from the California School Board Assn. to aid and abet the District as it lunges toward the World’s Fastest Super Search. For prestige, the meeting ranks just behind an invitation to the White House. This being Culver City, the Noble School Board is expected to employ its Shhh Strategy, which is code for Let’s Not Tell the Peasants What We’re Doin’.
If You Want My Advice
It is not only possible but logical that the School Board would decide to elect an eminently qualified hometowner to the position. This would save me a lot of the time that it takes to craft essays on Advice to the Search-lorn that are aimed at the welcoming arms of the School Board. Just in case the Noble School Board has no idea who or what it is looking for — a reasonable assumption — Santa Monica has created a template at no extra charge. When John Deasy resigned rather abruptly this spring as the innovative Superintendent of the Santa Monica/Malibu School District and dashed back to the East Coast, to Maryland, the School Board mopped its tears from the floor and organized a search team.
What Time Is It?
Helpfully, Santa Monica seems to be on the same time track as Culver City. Five semifinalists are to meet with the School Board on Saturday. Interviews will follow on Friday and Saturday of next week. A second round will be conducted June 12-13-16. The Board will select finalists on June 17, choose the winner the following week and present him or her at the June 29 meeting of the School Board. The new Super starts on Aug. 1, which is the day after Dr. Laura enters retirement, the day on which you would think the School Board would like its new Super to start. With the Noble School Board, it is not easy to discern whether the members are just slow or still are trying to figure out the rules of the game. You would think this was a shotgun wedding and the School Board was the reluctant groom, so casually are members of the Board trundling down the aisle.
Postscript
No one should harbor the perilously dark thought that Culver City could scoop up Santa Monica’s leftovers and see if those persons were a fit here. Santa Monica, being slightly more politically correct than Culver City, may be searching for a baldheaded lesbian, assigned to a minority culture, who has not necessarily been a member in good standing all of her or his or its life in a single gender. Culver City, I believe, prefers an educator fitting a more conventional profile. But we won’t know for sure unless I can borrow someone’s Toys R Us flashlight and furtively track down the papers containing the Shh Strategy.