The magician waves his wand, pulls back the curtain and there, in a puff of smoke, is Baltimore County's new school superintendent. Ta da! Cue applause.
That's not exactly what happened on March 27 when the announcement was made that S. Dallas Dance, chief of middle schools in the Houston Integrated School District, had been chosen to take the helm of the county school system.
But it's understandable if county residents are left scratching their heads, wondering what went on behind the curtain before the big reveal.
We welcome Dance and wish him well. Superintendent Joe Hairston's replacement may well turn out to be what the website yourhoustonnews.com calls a "rising star in education."
But those in the school district cannot help but notice that a major league school district, Baltimore County — the 26th largest in the nation — will have at its helm someone who may lack major league credentials.
Dance, who will be 31 when he takes the post in July, will be the youngest superintendent for the county in at least 50 years. In the past decade, he has changed jobs roughly every two years as he moved from English teacher to assistant principal and administrator in Virginia public schools and then to the post in Houston. A Virginia native, he has no experience in Maryland schools.
Also, Dance has only two years of direct teaching experience — the county had to ask for a special waiver from the state superintendent in order to get around the rule that at least three years of teaching experience is required.
Deepening our curiosity about his selection is the news that he was one of two candidates under consideration and that neighboring Howard County, also in search of a superintendent, was considering the same two, the other being Renee Foose, deputy superintendent for Baltimore County schools. Baltimore County got Dance — in what was apparently the first-round draft — and Howard County got Foose.
Was there any bargaining or note-comparing going on between the two school boards? What were the factors that led to the selection decision? Who else was seeking the job?
We may never know the answers to these questions. The argument is made that hiring negotiations have to be secret because candidates don't want their job hunt to be made public. But school boards elsewhere conduct superintendent searches with full transparency — they simply refuse to consider secret candidates.
In Florida, as The Baltimore Sun reported this week, candidates' applications are available to the public and interviews with the board — and the board's deliberations — are open to the public.
Wayne Blanton, executive director of the Florida Association of School Administrators, told the Sun that that involvement includes the work of the press and interested unions, and helps avoid unpleasant surprises after a superintendent already has been picked.
Some years from now, congratulations may well be in order for a wise decision in hiring Dance. We truly hope that's the case. But it won't be because the public had any say, or even inkling, about how the decision was made.
To be fair, we should note that the school system did host meetings and ask parents to fill out questionnaires about what they would like to see in a new superintendent at the front of the process, but we may never know if those comments played any role whatsoever in the selection.
This week State Sen. Jim Brochin declared himself "flabbergasted" at the school board's insensitivity to the public in its closed selection process.
We would tend to agree. It's getting tiresome watching these staged productions from the audience.