Pat O'Neill's Superintendent Search Experience

At the League of Women Voters' Board of Education Forum in Rockville this past Monday night, Pat O'Neill, current president of the Board of Education, touted her experience as the only current Board of Education member who has selected a superintendent.

Well....yes. Here's what happened on her first try:

Massie Withdraws As School Candidate
Montgomery Board Searching Again
By Manuel Perez-Rivas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 6, 1999; Page B01

Elfreda W. Massie bowed out yesterday as Montgomery County's leading candidate for school superintendent, just two days after revelations of her personal bankruptcy filings stunned school board members and threw her candidacy into a tailspin.

Massie, currently the number two school administrator in Baltimore County, was nominated Friday to succeed Montgomery Superintendent Paul L. Vance, whose term ends June 30. She was widely praised over the weekend as a well-qualified and enthusiastic educator who would ably lead Montgomery's school system, with its $1 billion budget, into the next century.

Civic, government and educational leaders anticipated meeting Massie in Rockville this week to learn about her educational vision.

But those meetings were canceled. Instead, Massie came to Montgomery to attend a private, late-night meeting Tuesday with the school board at the home of board President Reginald M. Felton (Northeastern County). During the meeting, Massie discussed the circumstances of her and her husband's two bankruptcy filings -- the most recent one last June -- and attempted to explain why she had not warned school board members before they endorsed her. It was not enough, however, to save her candidacy.

Eight weeks later, the Montgomery County Board of Education selected Jerry Weast.

So when Ms. O'Neill talks about her "experience" during a superintendent search, is she talking about the first, unsucessful, search process? or the second one, hastily embarked upon because of the failure of her first search? Is this the kind of "experience" we need?