Going into tonight’s 6 o’clock School Board meeting that will last long enough to confirm the new Interim Superintendent of the School District, a mother who did not want to be identified posed a ticklish question:
“Since the Board said yesterday that everybody in the District knows Patty Jaffe, because she has been here 40 years, and loves her, why not make her the Permanent Superintendent?”
Because it sounded eminently sensible, I contacted Scott Zeidman, Vice President of the Board, who drew up Ms. Jaffe’s contract.
Now see if he persuades you as he did me as he wends his way toward a logical conclusion.
What is the argument against making her permanent? I asked.
“I am not sure there is an argument either way,” he said. “We have not looked at any candidate whatsoever for Permanent.
“We don’t know how to look for candidates yet. At this point, we don’t want to hire an Interim with the idea that if she does well, it is going to be a permanent position.
“It doesn’t always work. So we haven’t made a decision yet on how we are going to find a Permanent Superintendent. But the idea was to get a bridge between now and the Permanent.”
Is it a possibility?
“Technically, the contract says ‘the Interim is not eligible to become the Superintendent.’
“The idea behind that is to let the Interim get in there and do the job. Right now we have an immediate job that needs to be done.
“Right now, the Interim is only the Interim, and that is the way it was set up. That is what the Board decided. That is the way Patty decided. We all agreed this is an interim position.”
What if she changed her mind?
“I have absolutely no idea because I am one vote out of five. And I don’t know how great of a job she is going to do.
“I think an Interim is going to be more like an umpire or a referee. I don’t think you will notice the Interim do something well because all the Interim is is a bridge to the next.
“The Interim can’t really make policy decisions and take the District in a new direction.
“When an Interim makes a mistake, you will notice it. But when something is done right, you won’t notice because you are expecting good.
“It isn’t as if over the next four to six months she will be deciding, ‘We are going to do this’ or something else because she is an interim.
“It was designed this way because we don’t want to go in two or three different directions.
“Dr. Cote had us going in whatever direction we were going. If the Interim comes in with the idea he or she may become the Fulltime, and takes us in a new direction, but the Board later decides that Interim is all that person is, and the new Superintendent comes in and changes everything again, you can see where this would lead.
“Not a good idea,” Mr. Zeidman concluded.
