Can you say “hubris,” class?
Pittsburgh Public Schools reportedly has chosen a new superintendent to replace the long-departed and ethics-challenged Anthony Hamlet.
Heck, the school board even is “trying to work out a contract with the candidate it selected out of a list of 30 applicants” winnowed to five finalists, the Post-Gazette reports.
The grand reveal reportedly will happen on July 27.
Who is this new school leader? Who were the other 29 candidates? Who are the top five? “Tsk-tsk, you, you, you bothersome public,” the school board might as well be saying; no names will be made public until the replacement’s contract for which the public will be paying is signed, sealed and delivered.
This from a school board that promised transparency in the process.
The board has offered all manner of rationalizations for its hubristic secrecy. The top one, however, the one that really takes the cake, is the supposed need to respect the privacy of the applicants.
Never mind the utter contempt, disregard and disrespect for the public and a necessary public process in finding a new superintendent.
Oh, indeed, the district’s “search firm” held public meetings to ask what attributes a new superintendent should have. That was to produce a profile of an “ideal” superintendent.
Cue the dog and pony show. There’s no substitute for being able to kick the tires in person, our grandpappies were wont to say.
If Pittsburgh Public Schools, a textbook case in operational and educational failure, was truly interested in “transparency,” it would have, in the least, identified the five “finalists” and staged a series of town hall meetings to allow them to state their cases and to allow the public to pepper them with questions.
But, nooooooooooooo! Instead, foist upon the public the same old-same old processes of the failed educratic bureaucracy and keep your fingers crossed that lack of real public input won’t come back to slap you.
It is public policy making at its worst. And yet again, as late humorist P.J. O’Rourke put it, “Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.”
More is the pity that the hubristic class continues to prevail.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
