Selecting a Superintendent

Several Orange County grand juries in recent years have recommended that the county superintendent of schools, like all the district superintendents in the county, be appointed by the school board rather than elected.

Once again that recommendation has come from a group of objective and informed people studying the relative merits of appointment and election. This time it was a special seven-member citizen’s blue-ribbon commission, appointed by the county Board of Education at the urging of last year’s county grand jury, which concluded that the appointive procedure would better serve the county’s educational system.

The commission noted that the elective system has no “clear-cut” accountability and creates overlapping areas of jurisdiction. It also said that the process of electing both the superintendent and members of the county Board of Education negated the effectiveness of each. The process, it said, limits the pool of candidates for superintendent and hampers the recruitment and selection of a candidate with the needed background and experience.

Those problems have been evident for years. So is the solution, which is to follow the lead of the 28 local school districts in the county and the other major counties in the state and have the elected school board hire the county school superintendent to administer board policy.

Unfortunately, voters historically have been reluctant to vote themselves out of the action by removing important public policy positions from the ballot. Orange County voters demonstrated that nine years ago when they rejected a ballot measure that would have made the superintendent’s job an appointive position.

The blue-ribbon commission thinks there ought to be another countywide vote. The issue is important enough to be put back on the ballot in 1988.

The problem is not the competency of the incumbent. But some public posts simply don’t belong on the ballot and should be filled after a nationwide recruiting effort yields the best-qualified person. The county superintendent of schools is such a post.