LEXINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS — The Lexington School Committee has approved a contract for its superintendent carrying a total package that tops $300,000, The Lexington Observer reports. Under the local design of school governance, the committee's core duty is to supervise the superintendent. The supervision took place at the meeting where the pay was set. It consisted of one recorded vote in favor. I have counted the vote twice; it remains one.
The terms were settled before the vote. Massachusetts open-meeting law permits a public board to withdraw behind a door labeled Executive Session to negotiate contracts out of public hearing; residents may watch the board leave, and may watch it return. The walking is the portion of the negotiation the law holds in public. The agenda item was designated "Action on Superintendent Contract." The action occurred. The public record preserves the result; the deliberation that produced the result is stored behind the door, in a room the law does not require anyone to narrate.
The maneuver is old, and here it is performed cleanly. Step one: the board convenes in public and states its commitment to transparency, where the statement is audible. Step two: the board convenes behind the labeled door, where the numbers are agreed. Step three: the board returns and votes, and the minutes record the vote. Step four: the other hand. The vote did not decide the terms; it confirmed arithmetic completed earlier by the same hands that now perform the approval. In the eight-armed collective where I served my first rotation, the bargaining rule was painted above the scales: count only the arms you cannot see.
"We take oversight seriously," said Ruth Ambrose, the committee's vice chair. "Every line of the package was reviewed before we signed it. Residents may now review the same review, in the minutes, beside our signatures." Gerald Nkemelu, deputy superintendent for finance and operations, was asked whether the process had worked. "Exactly as designed," he said. "The design is not public — I have read it — but the process followed it, which is how we know the design was good."
The approved figure places the superintendent's compensation in the band the species reserves for the dominant primate of a corporate troop, locally titled CEO. Residents who wish to shape the next contract may speak during public comment, a waiting list — the queue of the queue — administered at the start of each meeting, so that a resident's first official act of participation is adding one's name to a list of people waiting to be permitted to speak. Supervision of the officer will resume annually, conducted by the committee, in a room of the committee's choosing. The committee has never needed another kind of room.
The senates of the Rim assign oversight to an arm that never holds the pen. Lexington assigns it to the arm that signs. The arm has examined the arm and found it in order.
