Weast and the Board: Who should be on the way out?

by Frederick Stichnoth

I hope you saw Leah Fabel's article in Sunday's Examiner: MontCo schools chief on the way out (Page 5).

Generally, the article said that six of the Montgomery County Board of Education members (all but President Patricia O'Neill) would welcome Superintendent Jerry Weast's departure, largely because of his "imperial attitude," "he's Machiavelli," he uses "bullying tactics."  I've been irritated by these things too.

However, I would ascribe blame elsewhere. Weast is at the center of the Montgomery County political system, and heads a large and important bureaucracy. Given his function, he must manipulate the levers of power, and I greatly respect his skill in doing so.

He has seated other potentially competing powers at his "table," and thereby largely neutralized them.  I would include the unions, the County Council and MCCPTA.

I would also include, first and foremost, the Board of Education. The Board has great statutory powers (to establish policy, including curricula, and to set the budget) but has subordinated itself to the position of a rather insignifcant department in Weast's bureaucracy. (Some members, most notably Ms. Berthiaume, occasionally battle to establish some independence. Perhaps if the six members who want Weast gone had exercised their responsibilities consistently and cooperatively, then system management and priorities would not be so warped.) Weast's necessary exercise of power must be checked through a governance system of checks and balances, which the Board has squandered.

I also find it interesting that President O'Neill is said to approve of Weast's method of operation. It reminds me that Ms. O'Neill called Gifted and Talented parents who pressed to have a role on school improvement teams "PIAs--pain-in-the ass parents." (Board of Education meeting 5/12/09) Current Board of Education VP Barclay said that they were "not agreeable" and "don't know how to agree to disagree;" they should be "respectful" and "professional." In the classic line applied to John Bolton: "Kiss up, kick down."

The Board needs to reassert its prerogatives. This will require responsibility from the individual Board members, and voter insistence on that they assume responsibility. We have the opportunity to make Board responsibility the significant issue that it should be at the forthcoming elections, in which incumbents Brandman, Docca, O'Neill and Durso put their records up for scrutiny.