Oh, all you doubters, you Negative Nellies, you disbelievers of the Ige abilities.
Imagine your chagrin when the exhaustive, nitpicky and completely unrigged search for a new superintendent of schools comes up with Darrel Galera as the best person for the job. You’ll be eating your words then, mark my words. And then eat those, too.
Just because Darrel Galera was principal when Dawn Ige was vice principal in those halcyon days at Moanalua High School doesn’t mean the fix is in for him. It has nothing to do with them being frenz from back in the day. It could have been anybody. Anybody in the whole country. Anybody in the whole world. Any Darrel Galera in the universe. Cannot help if Darrel Galera ends up being the very best Darrel Galera for the job.
And just because he has been gunning for the current superintendent’s head since 2014, was appointed by Ige to head his 2016 advisory team to overhaul the public schools and was named by the governor to a spot on the Board of Education just last fall (when BOE member Jim Williams quit because of Ige’s heavy-handed circumventing of the BOE’s role in setting policy for the schools) does not mean that he has some sort of inside track that leads directly to the superintendent’s job. Come on, people. That’s not how things work.
Sure, Darrel Galera authored the 2014 document titled “THE VOICE OF HAWAII SCHOOL PRINCIPALS” (capitalization his) in which he asserted the singular importance of a principal, saying, “Leading research studies indicate that it is the leadership of the school principal that is the second most critical factor impacting student achievement, second only to the effectiveness of the classroom teacher. All other factors, such as family socioeconomic status, new standards, class size, use of computers, length of school year, etc. — while important, are significantly less important as compared to the impact of the leadership of the school principal.”
Really? Hmm. Guess we all have Mr. What’s-his-name in the orthopedic black shoes and brown aloha shirts who we saw once in four years at the “No Hope in Dope” assembly to thank for our individual successes.
But that’s OK. When all of the rigamarole about a nationwide search is over and it’s down to some Ph.D. from the Midwest and Darrel Galera, destiny will be revealed.
All kidding aside, Galera might very well be the heaven-sent savior to lead Hawaii’s public school system, but this awkward obfuscating is now and will always be a distraction from his leadership. Why Gov. and Mrs. Ige feel a need to bring in their guy through the back door instead of just saying, “This guy is good so we’re putting him in charge” is baffling. Just do it already. Stop with the Survey Monkey monkey business to make like there’s an actual process that will lead to the predetermined result. That kind of passive-aggressive, indirect but obvious maneuvering is insulting to the public and isn’t doing any good for their Galera.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
