Youngstown board shouldn't rush to name superintendent

The meeting of the Youngstown Board of Education tonight should be the shortest is history. All board members have to do is say no.
No to usurping the power of the incoming board of education.
No to abusing the present board's lame-duck status.
No to rushing into the hiring of a new superintendent without conducting a national search.
The Youngstown board is scheduled to meet in a special session at 6 p.m. to decide whether to hire Assistant Superintendent Wendy Webb as the superintendent or to launch a national search.
Outcome uncertain
The vote is too close to call. Three board members are on record as favoring hiring Webb, two have said they favor a national search and two are playing their cards close to the vest.
It sorts out like this:
Clarence Boles and Tracey Winbush chose to run for municipal office rather than seek re-election to the board. Boles was elected to city council; Winbush was defeated for city council president.
Terri O'Connor-Brown and vice president Geraldine Sullivan lost their bids for re-election.
The current board president, Lock P. Beachum Sr., and John Maluso and Jacqueline Taylor have two years remaining on their terms.
Boles, Winbush and Taylor want to hire Webb tonight. O'Connor-Brown and Sullivan want to conduct a national search. Beachum and Maluso haven't made their positions public.
Four votes are needed for either, and in any case, at least two of those votes are going to come from a lame-duck member. The difference is the degree of finality involved in the decisions. If a majority of the board votes to hire Webb, the hands of the new board are tied. If a majority votes to conduct a national search, all options remain on the table.
There is no reason why Webb can't or shouldn't compete against whatever candidates are found in a search.
Indeed, any candidate for a job as difficult as leading the Youngstown City School District at a times such as this should be eager to prove his or her qualifications against the strongest competition that can be assembled. Anything less, and the new superintendent, whoever he or she is, would be at a disadvantage.
Certainly, a new superintendent hired by a lame-duck board and inherited by a new board in a process that has so far been conducted completely behind closed doors would not begin operating from a position of strength.
There's time
The board need not rush. Superintendent Benjamin McGee has announced his resignation effective at the end of the academic year. The consultants hired to organize a search for a successor has suggested that the new superintendent be hired by March, but the board has a little wiggle room, not much, but a little.
The board had ample time to conduct its search. McGee announced his intention to retire 10 months ago. Certainly board members can't argue that they must now act precipitously because they did not act as quickly as they could have in launching a search.
Equally weak is a claim that this board has to act because the incoming board won't have the experience necessary to do a proper job.
If the four new members can't conduct interviews of candidates who survived the screening process, they had no business running for office. And it's not as if the outgoing members have vast amounts of experience on which to draw. They're all one-termers.
As the city school district continues to pursue its $170-million building program, as it grapples with meeting state standards for quality, increasing academic achievement and graduation rates and responding to the needs of the student body, as it faces tighter finances in years to come, the choice of a new superintendent will be the most important decision the board can make.
It shouldn't be made tonight.