Editorial: Boards need to keep their processes open

It’s been a disappointing couple of weeks for open government and the right of the people in Donley County to know what their governments are up to.

Following the state norm, Clarendon ISD has formally declared that it will only name a lone finalist in its search to replace longtime superintendent Monty Hysinger.

The process is just getting started, and CISD missed the first step in informing the public by not posting the job opening in the local paper, even though the top city and college positions have always been advertised locally as well as to a wider audience. The next superintendent is probably not from Clarendon, but the paper does have a lot of readers and people who are connected to other people. The last director of the Clarendon EDC saw the job in the Enterprise, and one of the finalists in the search for the next EDC director also saw the listing the local paper.

The school is at least going through the motions of getting public feedback ahead of the search. CISD will hold a public forum on what residents want to see in the next school superintendent next Monday, December 8, at 6:30 p.m. CISD is even conducting an online survey on that question at www.clarendonisd.net.

But the desire for public input apparently ends right there. Once, school officials start looking at candidates, the public won’t know who any of them are until one has been picked.

The school board has been advised that a candidate for this job will lose face at home if it is known that he or she has applied for the top job in Clarendon. “Their star will lose some of its luster,” Region 16 Executive Director John Bass told the board last month.

CISD Trustees are just following the counsel of their advisors in this process. But you have to wonder, why does the same not hold true for presidential candidates at Clarendon College? Did Dr. Robert Riza lose face at Hill College when he was named one of three finalists at Clarendon? Did Dr. Myles Shelton lose face here when he was named as a finalist in Galveston? What difference does it make? The people of Clarendon had a right to know that Riza was a candidate here, and before that they had a high interest in knowing that Shelton was looking to leave.

Sources have now told the Enterprise that Hysinger was a candidate for the top job at another school months ago. People here would have been interested in that.

School superintendents, like college presidents, are important public employees and the interest in staying or leaving or coming is of high concern to their employers, i.e. the taxpayers. We have a right to know who is being considered as our superintendent before that decision is made.

The beef here is not with our school trustees as individuals. But it is rather with the advice that they have been given. Just because most other districts in the state run a confidential search and keep the public in the dark doesn’t mean Clarendon ISD had to. They could have chosen to name two or three finalists. Naming one “finalist” isn’t naming any “finalist”… it’s just naming who you’ve hired.

And on the lines of the public’s interest, while Clarendon College goes above and beyond when it’s time to hire a president, it unfortunately doesn’t follow the same philosophy when it comes to filling a vacancy on the Board of Regents.

Two weeks ago, Dr. John Howard resigned his position on the CC Board of Regents ahead of his being sworn-in as county judge next month. In the same meeting, the board appointed former CC employee Darlene Spier to take Howard’s seat, and less than two minutes later the board named her its vice chairman.

Setting aside Mrs. Spier’s qualifications and unquestionable knowledge of the college, the public was given no consideration as to the appointment. It would have been nice to at least see a month’s separation between Howard’s resignation and his replacement’s appointment. The college has a nine-member board, so it’s not like there was a danger of not having a quorum.

No other names were ever mentioned before Spier was appointed to represent the people of the college district. We can only assume that her candidacy was discussed in closed session sometime, but we don’t recall that topic ever being on a college agenda in the last few months. The attorney general says it’s okay to discuss board members in closed session under personnel – even though they are representatives of the people instead of employees – but the attorney general also holds that “…the more important the position being discussed, the more specific the posting will need to be in describing that position.”

Who represents the people on the board until the next election, in this paper’s view, should have been very important.

Our school and our college are both run with good people on their boards, and we hope that moving forward they will do their level best to keep the public in the loop as much as possible when important decisions are to be made.