Lauderdale: Mosses must go, so credibility returns

Oh, really?

Beaufort County School District superintendent Jeff Moss invented a new $90,000 job in the central office -- that went to his wife.

Oh, really?

To do it, Moss erased a school board policy prohibiting such nepotism.

Oh, really?

And the school district changed the requirements for the job to say experience as a principal is "preferred" rather than "required." The superintendent's wife had never been a principal. But they say this was a clerical error and was never an intended requirement when the new job of "director of innovation."

Oh, really?

Moss does not remember some of the details of how this all happened. And Moss says he had no idea his wife was interested in the new job. And Moss and the yes-people who surround him say he had nothing to do with the selection of his wife for the job. And we are to believe that the superintendent's head of instruction, who answers to Moss, can fairly evaluate Moss' wife, who he now supervises.

Again and again, I find myself with the same response: Oh, really?

And the school board seems to be yawning about the whole thing.

I'm not sure a single soul believes all this is acceptable.

The fact that it happened is the scary part. It is, unfortunately, a very telling episode. It's a snapshot into the hearts and minds of our school leadership that is worth a thousand words.

The part I find most believable is when Moss said the $110,000 job that was vacated, clearing things up for the new job his wife got, was not a needed position because the work that person did was already being done by others.

It must be nice to snap your fingers and pour another $90,000 into the family lifestyle bucket. That's how much of the public and the worker-bees out in the classrooms going nose-to-nose every day with all of society's ills see this brazen move.

The school district's credibility is being erased, just like the common-sense policy that prohibited all of this.

Here's what it said:

"The board will not accept a recommendation for the appointment of a family member of the Superintendent for a position in the District Office ..."

Why is that widely-accepted standard hard to grasp? It was there for a very good reason: to help an organization and its leadership to remain credible.

I want the public schools to have credibility. We all need that.

Over the years, we've seen plenty of junk around here in local governance. Our school board once hired a superintendent who did not have a superintendent's certificate. But this outbangs anything I can recall in the sheer audacity and wrongness of it.

Moss says it's all honorable and honest.

He's wrong. Dead wrong. And the school board needs to tell Mr. and Mrs. Moss that on their way out the door.

Follow columnist and senior editor David Lauderdale at twitter.com/ThatsLauderdale and facebook.com/david.lauderdale.16.

This story was originally published September 17, 2015 at 8:06 PM with the headline "Lauderdale: Mosses must go, so credibility returns."