Why must the superintendent search continue in indefensible secret?

The APS School Board is planning a number of meetings during which they will separate the wheat from the chaff among candidates for the next superintendency.

Far too many of them will be held in secret from stake and interest holders.

The Open Meetings Act provides for the need for some part of some negotiations to be held in secret.

There are at least two ways that the leadership of the APS can comply with the law.

One way would be to role model the standard of conduct to which they hold students accountable; trustworthiness. The standard compels candor, forthrightness and honesty. It requires doing “more than the law requires and less than the law allows”.

The leadership of the APS interprets open government differently. If they have a public record that they would rather not produce, if they have a meeting that they would rather not open to public scrutiny, they will produce or open only those that they have been compelled to do by a court of competent jurisdiction.

School board members have basically two responsibilities; writing school board policy and hiring the right superintendent to enforce them.

When voters hold school board members accountable at election, is based on the policies they created and the superintendents they hired.

If the most important part of selection process takes place in secret from voters, how are they to hold school board members accountable for their performance in those meetings?

This coincidentally, is just what they have in mind.

If the very worst thing a politician or public servant can do, is anything they do in unjustifiable secret from the people whose power they wield and whose resources they spend, they must have a powerful need to continue to try to get away with it.