It's in the P-I

This evening, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Deborah Bach reported on the School Board meeting I attended and wrote about below. But if she was even in the room, she wasn't paying attention:

the Seattle School Board bowed to the inevitable Tuesday night and shelved its search for a new superintendent.

That leaves interim superintendent Raj Manhas in command of the state's largest school district on a one-year contract extension

No, he is not interim superintendent on a one-year contract extension. He is (non-interim) superintendent on a new one-year contract. That might be a subtle distinction, but that is a distinction that the board discussed and very clearly expressed its choice.

UPDATE The P-I corrected the above mischaracterization in a later article in which it introduced different mischaracterizatons!:

Mary Bass, the board's lone dissenter, urged her colleagues to delay the decision until after the election. "As much as I appreciate Mr. Manhas ... I think we might be rushing it a bit," she said, to cheers and applause from the standing-room-only crowd. "If he was named interim, you'd have my undying support. I'd like a new board in place first."

The crowd wasn't "standing-room-only". Although a number of people in the audience chose to stand in the back of the room, there were also plenty of open chairs. Only a few of the crowd members cheered and applauded Mary Bass. And the article fails to mention that most of the people in the audience gave Raj Manhas a standing ovation after the board voted to name him superintendent.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 07, 2003 10:21 PM