If the Howard County Board of Education is lucky, its most recent escapades will be forgotten by the time Superintendent Michael E. Hickey retires several years from now.
The whole affair for the school board -- specifically the way in which board members treated Dr. Hickey as they considered whether to renew the 56-year-old superintendent's contract -- has been a sorry dissent into ingratitude and ineptness.
To put it bluntly, the actions of the board are no way to treat a superintendent whom many describe as a superb administrator and educational leader. How would the school board have treated a superintendent with which it was unhappy if this is the way it treats one it wants to retain?
If I were a candidate for superintendent in Howard County and had any knowledge of what has transpired, I would think twice before committing myself to a position. But then again, the way this matter was handled is at the very root of why Dr. Hickey began looking elsewhere for employment.
Without a contract or a commitment from the Howard board, Dr. Hickey was absolutely justified in giving serious consideration to overtures from the Wake County, N.C., school system. It was not ambition or greed that set this process in motion, but a lack of loyalty shown by the board.
To go back to the beginning, what started this chain of events were comments two board members made while they were candidates for the board last fall. Stephen Bounds' and Karen B. Campbell's remarks about the need to begin searching for a new superintendent certainly could not be read as a vote of confidence Dr. Hickey. And the fact that sitting board members never stepped forward to counter the criticism didn't help.
Even in the face of possibly losing Dr. Hickey to Wake County, school board Chairwoman Susan Cook refused to express support for the superintendent.
Her excuse: The board was in the process of evaluating Dr. Hickey, so it was a confidential personnel matter. Yet Ms. Cook is the person who more than two years ago, while running for the board, gave the superintendent a lukewarm grade of "B" in assessing his tenure.
Apparently, it is OK to pass public judgment during a campaign when a candidate can score points for toughness, but it is inappropriate to express public support while sitting on the board.
Making this matter worse, board members were warned around the time of the last election that they needed to react quickly to retain Dr. Hickey. Instead, the board held to an ambiguous schedule that was more for the convenience of board members than a reflection of the situation at hand. In addition, the tendency of some board members to be unavailable for frequent meetings when necessary only delayed the process.
The fact that the board was ultimately forced to extend a commitment to Dr. Hickey at the last minute only proved how badly things had gotten out of hand.
While Dr. Hickey considered the Wake County job, the only real criticism to surface came from County Council Chairman Charles C. Feaga, who suggested Dr. Hickey should be replaced because he had been too successful in securing county funds for the school system. More to the point, Mr. Feaga felt the superintendent doesn't possess enough appreciation for the county's fiscal constraints. That may be an OK position for a council chairman trying to hold the line on spending, but it is hardly the position one would expect a school board to play.
Now that Dr. Hickey has withdrawn from the Wake County process, he is forced to negotiate a salary and benefits package under a cloud.
In the short term, the school board may benefit from the advantage it has gained by dragging its feet. But it had better hope that its antics don't filter out to the small cadre of people who might one day be turned to to replace Dr. Hickey.
The best candidates won't want to tangle with a board as fickle as this.
Kevin Thomas is The Baltimore Sun's editorial writer in Howard County.