SOUTHERN INDIANA — Given the politics between the state superintendent of public instruction, the governor and the state board of education, local school officials said a proposed change could be a good idea.
This week, the Associated Press reported on a bill to stop the practice of automatically appointing the elected state superintendent to the chairmanship of the state board of education. It made it through the Republican-controlled House Education Committee.
Rifts between the current superintendent, Glenda Ritz, and the state board have received a lot of attention from the boards of school districts. Bill Wilson, president of the board at Clarksville Community Schools and first vice president of the Indiana School Boards Association, said he’s not surprised the legislation is now up for a vote.
“I think it’s regrettable that we’ve gotten to this point,” Wilson said. “I think that the rift between Glenda Ritz and the state board has become so great that it’s very dysfunctional, and that’s sad for everybody. I’ve actually talked to Glenda multiple times going back a couple of years to build bridges and it hasn’t happened. You can blame who you want to blame for that.”
He said he’d be surprised if the bill doesn’t eventually pass and that it could pave the road to the state superintendent’s office becoming a governor-appointed position, not state-elected.
Monty Schneider, superintendent of West Clark Community Schools, said in some ways, it makes sense to separate the roles of state superintendent and state board chairman. He said looking at school districts, they operate in a similar manner.
“There’s a lot of disagreement that they have right now,” Schneider said. “I think it is a waste of taxpayer money to have two separate staffs. I’ll just leave it at that. I think on the local level, you’d want the contracted local superintendent and the local elected school board to have different staffs.”
He also said the idea isn’t new, as he believes it was proposed by Democrats about 20 years ago. He said he sees the benefits of the move, but its timing with an election coming up looks politically motivated.
“At least you’d have a smoother transition and a smoother operation,” Schneider said. “I’m not opposed to that, but doing it right now, it looks super political. The only Democrat right now is the elected state superintendent.”
Rebecca Gardenour, president of the board of trustees for the New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corp., said with the butting of heads at the state level, it hurts everyone else.
“If that’s a solution to eliminate this dysfunction after two years, maybe that’s the right direction,” Gardenour said. “The bottom line is all this is hurting kids, that’s just the way I see it. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, everyone needs to get their act together and learn to collaborate for the sake of the kids.”
Schneider said he’s not sure how the proposal will turn out, but he agrees that something has to happen to fix relations with state education leaders.
“It’s a difficult topic, but what’s going on right not doesn’t serve education well,” Schneider said. “A board and a superintendent don’t always need to agree, but they do need to work together.”