Valley Patriot

Remove Superintendent from the Table

After the firing of Lawrence School Superintendent Jim Scully back in 1998 I pleaded with my fellow School Committee members to set a new tone before another Superintendent was hired.  

Though I had voted not to fire Scully, the two years I had served with him were fraught with frustration and conflict. At times he refused to allow administrators to publicly answer my questions. Fellow board members had the attitude that their elected position was ceremonial and that the real decision-maker was Scully, not the Committee.  

They rubber-stamped budgets and allowed previous votes to go by the wayside without ever being carried out. There were even times when the Superintendent verbally attacked board members for asking questions about the shortcomings in the system as though we worked for him not the other way around.  

And my fellow board members liked it that way. It meant that they didn't have to do any real work. They could show up every two weeks and laud praises on him and the schools as though there were no real problems to address. They held themselves responsible for nothing because, after all, Jim Scully was the Superintendent. He was in charge. Any question of his authority was considered meddling. Any member who disagreed with him was told they were micromanaging.  

It was a disaster waiting to happen and in the end, though the Committee had blindly approved every single proposal Scully brought forward, they blamed him when things went wrong and washed their hands of responsibility as they fired him for doing what they had signed off on.  

After his firing (and before acting Superintendent Ken Seifert took over) I pleaded with my colleagues to remove the Superintendent from the Committee table.  

Having the scandal so fresh in everyone's mind was a big help. I normally didn't get much support from fellow board members in those days. But the vote was unanimous.  

For an entire year acting Superintendent Ken Seifert sat in the audience while the Committee conducted "Committee business." It worked extremely well, too. Just the simple placement of the Superintendent away from the table seemed to put things into proper perspective for everyone.

But it didn't last.  

Shortly after I left the Committee, a new School Committee (headed by Mayor Patricia Dowling) hired Wilfredo Laboy. In the spirit of "unity" they rescinded the vote and allowed a Superintendent to sit with the Committee once again. It was a mistake of monumental proportions.

In the very same ways Laboy, and the new Committee, became a mirror image of what I had experienced in 1996.  

School Committee members experienced the very same of administrators not being allowed to answer questions without the Superintendent's permission. The Superintendent attacking Committee members in public as though they worked for him (remember Laboy asking Noah Shannon "Who the hell do you think you are?") as Though Laboy was his boss?

The stonewalling was back and public information became impossible to secure, while the Superintendent sat in the middle of the table as though he was in charge of the Committee and the meeting. For the past two years Laboy has refused to allow school employees to address the Committee. He has held back critical information and, just like with Jim Scully, Committee members became rubber stamps with little or no involvement in the direction of our schools.  

I want to make this clear; Superintendent Wilfredo Laboy is not the issue here.  

He is doing what I believe any Superintendent would put in the very same position. The previous actions of my friend Jim Scully are proof of that.  

The new Committee has a chance to correct this In January.  

New Committee member Carlos Ramos says that his first act in January will be to propose moving the Superintendent away from the Committee table. The importance of Ramos' motion cannot be overstated.  

The Superintendent works for the School Committee. Period. Having this or any Superintendent control the meeting, the flow of discussion, the amount of information given to the public or school employees who are called to speak to the Committee flies in the face of the city charter and the function of the Committee.  

I urge every new board member to consider very seriously what Carlos Ramos is proposing and look at the history of Committee troubles (recent and not so recent) before rejecting it out of hand.  

If Lawrence is to hold the Superintendent accountable for the school system they must take responsibility themselves by acting as his boss and treating him as such. They must run their own meetings and they have to send a message to the Superintendent as well as the public at large that they alone drive the debate and discussions.  

Carlos Ramos is to be applauded and supported in January when he makes this motion to the Committee. Any member who votes no is only inviting another debacle like the Scully firing and the near takeover of our school by the state.