Capital Editorial
School board’s transitional two-step will be confusing, February 8, 2018.
Snider Comment
Well, yes, it has been very confusing for the Capital. From the very moment the General Assembly simultaneously created the School Board Appointment Commission (SBAC) and an elected school board, I have been saying here in the Capital and elsewhere that the SBAC, contrary to the General Assembly’s press releases, would continue to play a major role in the selection of school board candidates. This role should have been reported prior to the passage of the SBAC legislation and at the latest shortly after it passed. But better late than never.
Although it now appears that the Capital has some semblance of an understanding of how the SBAC works, I see no evidence of a similar understanding of how the elected school board will work in practice. The presumption is that it will work just like other elections in the county–of which we are all familiar. But that is not the case at all, as the public will gradually begin to discover; for many, when they first enter the polling booth later this year.
The Capital reminds me of an adolescent who cannot learn except through painful experience. Perhaps the greatest difference between the Capital and an adolescent is that the adolescent suffers the pain of his or her error and thus tends not to repeat it. But in the case of the Capital, it is the public that suffers the pain while the Capital continues to send its double digit profits to Tronc, its corporate owner based in Chicago, IL.
