It appears the Bridgeport Board of Education is still fighting over who has the power to make final hiring decisions – though this time it wasn’t about Bassick High School’s principal.

Howard Gardner and Sauda Baraka seem to think it’s not the Superintendent, despite it being plainly spelled out in the BOE’s certified staff hiring policy.

The policy states: “The final interview and decision will rest with the Superintendent.”

What renders this whole issue even more ridiculous is that this is a new policy that both Baraka and Gardner voted on last fall. Prior to the adoption of the new certified staff hiring policy, the BOE did not interview principal candidates.

Readers may remember the hissy fit Gardner raised over Superintendent Fran Rabinowitz’s Bassick High School principal choice, where he refused to attend a personnel committee meeting and then sent an irate email to the superintendent accusing her of misconduct.

In a similar vein, at Monday night’s meeting, the duo attempted to push the Board into executive session to discuss the appointment of Stephen Cassidy as Assistant Principal of Cesar Batalla School.

Gardner insisted that he was concerned that superintendent did not “follow the process.”

In reality, all the superintendent did was choose an assistant principal candidate that he and Baraka disagree with.

One thing to consider: in addition to over ten years of public school teaching experience, Cassidy went through the Residency Program for School Leadership at Cesar Batalla School – a program which was facilitated by Achievement First.

Might this absurd outcry have something to do with Baraka and Gardner’s hatred of Achievement First?

Are they trying to use this new policy to micro-manage the superintendent and inject politics into the Bridgeport Board of Education’s hiring practices?

What’s next? Checking to see if janitorial hires have posted favorably about charter schools on Facebook?

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