Isn't it time Seattle had superintendent who knows schools?

The new school year will mark the 11th consecutive year in which the Seattle Public Schools have not been led by an experienced educator.

There's no question that John Stanford, our first noneducator superintendent, both energized our schools and their supporters and enacted real gains in policy and practice, including the weighted student formula and the new teacher contract that allowed principals to hire teachers who fit their school's values.

But his successors, Joseph Olchefske and Raj Manhas, have both repeatedly fallen victim to their inexperience and inadequate knowledge and skills.

Stanford's untimely death led the School Board to entrust the district to Olchefske, who had no prior experience in public schooling before he started to work as Stanford's chief financial officer.

While the board members were blind to his failings, Olchefske alienated parents, teachers, principals and community groups.

When Olchefske was forced to announce a $35 million budget deficit in October 2002, it was evident how little support he had beyond his loyal board members. The Moss Adams audit of the district's budget revealed that Olchefske was directly responsible for the district's financial woes through his failure to supervise budget employees effectively.

Olchefske resigned in April 2003, even before the Moss Adams report, with its devastating personal critique, was publicly released. The School Board, with a majority of its members being the same folks who hired Olchefske, repeated its hiring pattern from 1999: They hired the No. 2 guy, Manhas, first as acting superintendent and then, when their search turned into a farce, as permanent district leader.

Unlike Olchefske, Manhas is evidently a people person. But exactly like Olchefske, he had no prior experience with schools and no particular understanding of or expertise in the issues of urban schooling.

In the School Board election of 2003, three of the members who appointed Manhas lost, a very clear message from the voters. Irene Stewart was critical of the previous board's appointment of Manhas in October 2003, but a year later she voted to give him a three-year contract. Brita Butler-Wall was a vehement critic of Manhas during her campaign, but within a year she had become his most enthusiastic supporter, a shocking betrayal to many who supported her campaign.

When four board members gave Manhas his three-year contract in October 2004, they noted the new five-year teacher contract as his greatest accomplishment. Now we know that while the teachers certainly deserve their raises, there is no money in the anticipated school budgets to pay for them. Certainly Manhas and his chief of operations, Mark Green, yet another No. 2 guy who has no experience as an educator, knew about this problem when the contract was signed. But no one said a word in public until Manhas had his own contract.

Manhas' other supposed achievement was the district's five-year plan. It's an unfocused wish list mixing some very good ideas with a lot of mediocre ones, without any apparent strategy for prioritizing what's most important. And it also comes without adequate funding.

Manhas' solution to his budget woes was to close schools. Yet, the school-closing plan he constructed had no connection to academic achievement and no coherent rationale for its choices. Academically it was clueless. Politically it was such a disaster that even the mayor felt the need to attack it.

Manhas quickly withdrew the school-closing plan. Butler-Wall claimed the next day that this decision showed Manhas to be a man of courage, because he could change his mind.

A more accurate reading of the situation is that Raj Manhas lacks the capabilities to be an effective superintendent of schools. Being a nice guy who listens is not enough. He does not have the deep knowledge of schooling that we need a superintendent to have, and he obviously lacks the high level of political skills that leadership demands, skills that John Stanford had in abundance.

In 1995, the Seattle School Board had the good fortune to recruit Stanford. But the tragedy of Stanford's untimely death has now been compounded by repeated errors in judgment by School Board members who have put men into the superintendent's job who were neither experienced educators nor capable political leaders.

This new school year will be the seventh year that the district will be led by someone who was not qualified for the job. In addition, the only veteran educator at Manhas' side, Steve Wilson, chief academic officer, is retiring in a year, and his announcement has just made him a lame duck.

Isn't it time that Seattle had a superintendent of schools who had a deep knowledge of schooling and who had demonstrated the requisite political skills before he was hired?

David Marshak is a professor in the College of Education at Seattle University.