From the Editor: School board meets to pick superintendent; random acts of courtesy

The St. Mary Parish School Board will meet at 5 p.m. Thursday to interview the four candidates for superintendent. If all goes according to plan, the board will then pick the person who will succeed Leonard Armato as chief of the public schools, all in the same night.
Each interview is expected to take a little less than an hour. So a school board meeting, which seldom lasts much longer than an hour, is likely to go to at least 10 p.m. There will be some yawns at St. Mary workplaces Friday morning.
But that wasn’t the sleep that board member Kenny Alfred was worried about missing.
When the time was set last week, board President Michael Taylor suggested a 3 p.m. Feb. 28 meeting. Other days and times had been discussed, including a Saturday interview session followed by selection at a special meeting on another date. Armato, who is retiring June 30, was selected that way in 2015.
Taylor said he had talked to other board members, and found the 3 p.m. Feb. 28 date to be convenient. Vice President Pearl Rack was evidently not among them.
“You talked to other board members,” Rack told Taylor. “You didn’t talk to me.”
Rack planned to attend a conference and couldn’t make the 3 p.m. start time. Board member Joseph Foulcard couldn’t make it, either. But the board voted to have the special meeting at 3 p.m. Feb. 28.
Anyone who has tried to get more than two people together for anything will be inclined to cut the board some slack. The phrase “herding cats” usually comes to mind.
But a meeting time that excludes two members would have been an important matter. Each of the school board’s 11 members represents something like 4,500 residents. If Rack and Foulcard don’t get a voice in the superintendent selection, neither do the 9,000 St. Mary people they represent.
It doesn’t help that both Foulcard and Rack represent west end districts in a parish where there is sometimes an east-west split on major issues. Both members represent districts with substantial African-American populations.
But that seemed to be the way things were going to be until, as the meeting drifted along, Alfred asked the board to reconsider.
“I couldn’t sleep at night knowing we voted two of our members out of the selection process,” Alfred said.
The board talked it over and discovered the 5 p.m. meeting time would work. The motion to make the switch to 5 p.m. passed on a voice vote with no objections.
“Thank you very, very much for making that motion,” Rack told Alfred.
The four candidates for superintendent are:
—Clyde Washington, executive assistant superintendent of administration in Rapides Parish with 22 years’ experience.
—Dr. Teresa Bagwell, assistant St. Mary superintendent with 37 years’ experience.
—Dr. Glen Barnes, the only out-of-state applicant, a principal in Cleveland, Texas, with 20 years’ experience.
—Dr. Buffy Fegenbush, St. Mary instructional supervisor of secondary education, with 27 years’ experience.
You may not get the superintendent you would have chosen. But it won’t be because your school board representative was blocked from taking part in the process.
As this is written, the news is reporting that President Donald Trump’s former lawyer has called the president a racist, a liar and a cheat. A Republican congressman has publicly told that attorney, in language familiar to anyone who watches mob movies, that it would be a shame if something happened to his family
A young man, who I’m told is a celebrity, is charged with making up a lie about a homophobic attack.
That’s what the news is like these days. So it’s good to be able to report news about an act of public-spirited decency.
Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review.