A bird in the hand... or in the School Department

I would like to address the situation regarding the proposed search for a new school superintendent in New Bedford. My wife is an educator in the New Bedford school system, so I have some secondhand knowledge of what is happening within the schools.

You can see a letter of support that she has written on the blog of the New Bedford Educators Association supporting Dr. Mary Louise Francis. You can find this online at http://newbedford.massteacher.org/blog.html.

There is an overwhelming amount of support for Francis within the school system. I question why a search is necessary at all. There will never be a person who comes along who will please all the people all the time. But at this time, Francis is pleasing quite a few of them.

There are only a few dissenters on the school board who feel a search is necessary.

As a voting taxpayer, I feel a search for a different superintendent is a waste of time, resources and money that could be put to better use in some other way to benefit the school system. We saw what the last search brought us, and it wasn't very pretty.

Apparently the people who conducted the last search thought they made the right decision. How much did that cost us? The wrong person was put in place once by the School Committee, and it could happen again.

We have someone in place now who has experience with the New Bedford Schools, and anyone coming from outside will have a lot of work just familiarizing themselves with the basics at a time when we need them working on improving education.

We know what we have in Francis. Searching for someone else could very well yield the same results as the last search. Do we want to chance it? Do we want to gamble with the education of our children?

Thomas W. Simon

New Bedford