By Rob Holbert Managing Editor

Overall, the buzz about our little piece of Heaven seems to be pretty good lately.

Just last week, The Wall Street Journal penned a piece about how Mobile is booming after Hurricane Katrina.

Also last week, Parade magazine featured our school system’s recent successes in a story it shoved in somewhere between Walter Scott’s Personality Parade and the world’s smartest woman. (OK, Parade ain’t the WSJ, but it’s good publicity, too.)

Generally speaking, things look pretty good around here. Business seems to be improving for most of us, and we’re getting some much-deserved recognition. So I keep wondering why the school board appears to be readying to try to screw things up.

If you read our story in the last issue of Lagniappe – or a similar story a week later in the daily rag – you might recall that nothing has been done toward renewing Mobile County schools Superintendent Harold Dodge’s contract. It expires in the spring, and it appears school board members are fairly content to let the matter languish until at least November.

Normally I wouldn’t care that much about a public employee’s contract, but it seems the board is about to make a dumb mistake, and I can’t figure out why. Now Dodge didn’t invent the detention pad or those nets the lunch ladies wear over their hair, but it still seems like he’s been a pretty good superintendent. Especially when we consider some of the turmoil we’ve had with past superintendents.

Heck, Dodge is the current Alabama Superintendent of the Year, which apparently means his peers think he’s pretty good at his job, too. (I think the title gives him the power to marry people and absolve student loan debts, but I’m not completely certain of that.)

The Parade article talks about how the county voted in 2001 to increase property taxes to support our schools, an effort in which Dodge showed true leadership. It also lauds the system’s Partners in Education Program, which has about 1,000 local businesses helping schools. And, the story highlights the increased test scores over the past few years and a record $54 million in scholarships our students received this year. All that on Harold Dodge’s watch. Not bad. Any football coach who did that well would certainly be re-upped.

So why is there no apparent effort to keep him on? Surely if he went looking, another school system somewhere would throw fat cash at Dodge to get him onboard. And, in fact, after having his successes featured in a magazine read by 79 million people and 25 million parrots across the nation, my guess is an offer may come soon. (From the people, not the parrots.) Meanwhile, our dysfunctional school board fiddles around, playing a cat-and-mouse game with the superintendent.

All of this business is wound up, just like so much of everything else in the past year, with the David Thomas saga. During Thomas’ dying political days, it appears he was working hard behind the scenes to oust Dodge. Many folks around town thought Thomas had a handpicked candidate in mind to replace The Harold. But that didn’t come to pass after it was revealed Thomas used $9,000 in school money to buy Mardi Gras throws. Still, during all of this mess, Dodge was given a vote of no confidence by the board and had a to-do list shoved on him of things he’d need to accomplish before turning in his keys to Barton Academy.

But elections were upon us and some of the board members got nervous because of public backlash over getting rid of the popular Dodge. Newcomer Judy Stout was a vocal critic who pulled a 180 around election time after it looked like canning Dodge might land her in the unemployment line next to him. So the board re-voted and decided not to let Dodge’s contract expire, and Stout and others talked like Dodge’s contract will get done. But not so fast.

They got the heat off for a bit, but when I spoke with school board members last week, I was hearing a different story. Hazel Fournier made no bones about her desire to get rid of Dodge. Lonnie Parsons now claims he’s for keeping Dodge, even though he voted to ditch him in the first vote. But the lame duck Parsons indicated the board may just be trying to ride things out for a little while so they can avoid renewing the contract.

My guess it the board hopes that by screwing around, Dodge will get antsy and start looking elsewhere. He’s done so in the past when his contract was in doubt. It would be an easy political solution for a group that doesn’t seem to have much political backbone. If Dodge gets out of Dodge, so to speak, they can say they wanted him back but he took off.

I’ve heard credible rumors that some on the board have an in-house candidate they would like to replace Dodge, but I’ve also heard that candidate may already be looking elsewhere, too. All in all, no one seems very certain of what the board’s ultimate plan is – assuming they have one. (I doubt it.) Maybe the school board members want someone they can manipulate more easily than the very popular and politically cagey Dodge. If they’re looking for a jellyfish, though, that’s a mistake.

In fact, it would be a major mistake to let Harold Dodge go somewhere else just as the accolades are rolling in. If we reward success this way, it’s going to be unlikely the good press or educational progress will continue.

Rob Holbert is Lagniappe managing editor. Contact him at rholbert@lagniappemobile.com.

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