CASB’s interview process limits citizen input

Dear Editor:

Last week I wrote a letter concerning what is now looking even more like a "set-up" in regards to how the Colorado Association of School Boards (CASB) is handling the choosing of a new superintendent for Delta County Schools. The Delta County School Board hired CASB (pronounced kaz' bee) to help locate a new superintendent; originally they got us 20 applicants to choose from, but it seems like CASB is intent on minimizing citizen input to determine which of those candidates will be chosen!

Almost 30 of Delta County's best and most interested citizens walked in the door for the CASB interview training (required of all the interviewers) on April 17. There was profile information to pick up about each of the three finalist candidates. Then the CASB rep took a half hour to tell us the order of events for the all-day Saturday interview, and he gave us protocol to follow, such as that we shouldn't cross-examine the candidates. We then split up into teams, and each of us were given nine pages containing 92 suggested questions! We were instructed to take the next one and a half hours to decide on 10 questions (per team) to ask the superintendent candidates. We could either write our own questions or rewrite any part of the 92 CASB questions.

I had 4 1/2 pages of citizens' questions sitting at home that I had gathered in the past two weeks. But we were not told to prepare, or to bring, questions to this training session! And why hadn't CASB e-mailed us their 92 questions so we could be working on the assignment for the past two weeks, so we could come to the meeting ready to share ideas with others on the teams? No, without warning they expected us to come up with well organized and edited questions in an hour and a half!

Yes, I am crying 'foul!' This CASB organization is messing with our common sense and cutting away at citizen input. CASB is only fostering the illusion of local decision making! Do we not have the special faculty of intelligence which disciminates between the false and the true? Unless we stand up and say "No!" and stop cooperating when we see something that looks wrong, we'll wake up as slaves before we know it!

Kathy Svenson

School Board Member

Delta

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