When Greg Nickels first proposed former Mayor Norman Rice as a candidate for the Seattle School board, I thought he was just doing some wishful thinking. It never occurred to me that he actually would want the job.
Mayors who take prestigious national positions rarely come back to take a thankless job like this. Education of inner city kids has never been America's strength, and having the political and social power to stem white flight at the same time has overwhelmed most school systems.
But when I ran into Rice last week at Ezell's Chicken, he surprised me by showing so much passion for the job. He really wants to do this, and that is the reason why I believe that the Seattle School Board needs to hire this man.
The school system does not need an educator, they need a leader who can create an educational agenda and sell it to the various communities. We have a person who does educational strategy, and now we need a politician/community organizer to forge the alliances needed to make it work.
If the school board goes out and does a national search, chances are Rice will have his name in as a candidate. After spending thousands of taxpayers' dollars, they will realize that Rice is the best candidate and they may find they have upset the public and the new superintendent in the process.
Look at the editorials in the major newspapers and the people lined up behind Rice for this position. There is an air of inevitability about this, and a recently maligned school board may find themselves run over by a political juggernaut.
Yet this is not about bad choices here. Norm Rice is the right choice for this job. He has a personal stake in the outcome, which is not the case with outsiders who simply resign this job and move on to the next. He already knows the neighborhoods and the people in them so he can get busy right away. It would take a new person at least two years to get the lay of the land and then another two years to make something happen.
I didn't think he would want the job but now that it is clear that he does want it, badly, we should hire him as soon as possible. It's rare to find someone who can bring the downtown business community and the neighborhoods together behind an educational agenda. He's someone who successfully did this before as mayor.
I am not one who believes that we have a weak school board. I think this is one of the most talented boards we have ever had, and after they work together for a while that will be obvious. There are some sexist overtones as well and reasons to believe that much of the criticism has to do with it being a female dominated board. However, it was men, Stanford and Olchefske, who left a major debt behind which has forced some unpleasant decisions onto a board that has yet to develop an identity.
Because our present superintendent is not a strong, forceful leader the board has had to assume a role its not suited for. The superintendent creates the agenda and he sells it to a board that makes him or her dot the Is and cross the Ts. They then sell this modified agenda to the public with the Superintendent out front. That is why he gets paid and board does not. It's his job to lead and convince the public that it's important to do some things even if they are unpleasant,
Instead of that we have a superintendent staying away from conflict and resigning when he is pulled into it. We have a school board under attack because they have to fix a mess they had nothing to do with creating.
Norman Rice can be a leader and take the focus off the board and back where it should be, in the superintendent's office. He already has a clear picture of the school districts and knows many of the community leaders by first name.
If he wants this headache, give it to him. If I were a school board member I would see this as a god send and immediately sit down with Rice and talk contract. We don't pay our school board any money, and they should not be taking this abuse. If we keep beating them up like this we may find it difficult to get good candidates.
In the meantime, we have found the best superintendent candidate possible, and we need to put him to work immediately before he realizes what he has gotten himself into.
Central Area writer Charlie James may be reached by writing to the Beacon Hill News.
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