There’s a suspension of logic in every horror movie where the teenagers decide to explore the cellar. Several previously have gone down the stairs and disappeared but the plot needs someone to tread the groaning boards, brush aside the alien protoplasm and brave the brain-sucking monster.
The audience cries: “Don’t go down there! Get out of the house! You’ll be eaten alive!”
But sensible behavior would make a bad movie.
So, I’m mystified at the three choices presented by the search firm Ray and Associates as finalists for DeKalb County superintendent. I’m also sure that the three candidates did not, in their wildest dreams, expect to be selected. These are three long shots; candidates who are not from this area, who lead small school districts and who already make great salaries.
What would possess these three to have their hands on the door knob of the scary cellar that is DeKalb County Schools?
Don’t they know what is down there?
The winning candidate will have to deal with scandal, lawsuits, a chance of losing accreditation, a county that is divided racially and socio-economically, inept principals leading failing schools, to name just the most obvious. The north end of DeKalb has parents who will hold their breaths until their neighborhood schools are saved and a south end that has become resegregated and has schools where the T’s outnumber the P’s in PTA.
It would take years just to find the closets holding the skeletons. It would take years to alter the downward course of education in this county, to stem the outflow of good teachers, to recognize effective administrators and to return the useless ones to classrooms, not put them back at the Board of Education working on “special projects” at full salaries. A new superintendent has to sweep in with dynamite and a crowbar to dislodge the bloat in having more than 500 administrators, including principals, at an annual average salary of $90,900 each.
(Michelle Rhee, the ex-superintendent of Washington, could do it. In fact, she was in Atlanta earlier this year but no school board in the area offered her a job.)
I understand why the two candidates from Illinois want the job; this winter has been long and trying and the mild weather in Atlanta has to figure into their decisions. But Arthur R. Culver is already making a reported $226,000 a year running a city school district with less than 9,000 students. He’s either overpaid in his present position or he will be underpaid running DeKalb County Schools for a little more cash but 10 times the number of students and problems.
The fact that there aren’t any internal candidates should be a clue that the grass down here is not greener, it just turns green earlier in the spring.
My advice to the three candidates would be to stay at their jobs, be happy and prosper, and for the DeKalb Board of Education to throw the search back to the Ray and Associates until they do a better job.
Some large school districts have gone outside the educational sphere to hire superintendents. Chicago, after years of importing educators who promised change but were ineffective and who were paid more than the mayor, decided to try a businessman. Others have picked retired generals.
DeKalb needs a person with vision who realizes that using public money is a sacred trust and that the goal of every teacher and administrator is to promote useful and meaningful educational progress. The ego has to be subverted to this purpose. And, a word of advice to the new superintendent — don’t bus all the teachers to a stadium for a pep rally. It’s a school district, not Wal-Mart.
Janusz Maciuba teaches at DeKalb Technical College.
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