KY's new schools leader a critical choice

This time, the process to select a new Kentucky education commissioner seems more open and likelier to yield an excellent, qualified candidate. Given the priority Kentucky must place on education, this matters a lot.

The first try at this process was pretty much a debacle. The State Board of Education did a bad job of checking candidates. The board hired Illinois educator Barbara Erwin in May, but she resigned before she was supposed to start amid a lot of questions that emerged about her track record.

One of today's candidates is Northern Kentucky's own Jon Draud, a state representative and retired superintendent of the Ludlow schools. Draud certainly is qualified, and no one should question how much he cares about schools. From the parochial perspective of our region, no other candidate would be better positioned to understand how fast-growth districts get penalized badly by the way the state funds schools.

But the other candidates seem pretty impressive, too. For example, Owensboro Superintendent Larry Vick runs a 4,300-student district that is meeting its No Child Left Behind goals, among other accomplishments. Then there's Jim Warford, a native of Shelby County who is director of the Florida Asssociation of School Administrators and a former chancellor for Florida's public schools. "I can't think of a greater personal or professional honor than to return to my home and continue the education reforms under way in Kentucky," he told the Courier-Journal.

There are two other named candidates and one yet to be disclosed. The state board is scheduled to interview the finalists at a meeting in Covington on Nov. 13 and 14. Here's a link to the board's list of qualities the occupant of this terribly important job should have.

In our story, Draud expressed a hope that the new commissioner would be from Kentucky. That's a plus but not nearly as essential as finding the right combination of skills, background, vision and leadership to get our schools to the next level.

Some of Kentucky's answers might not even be in America when you look at the commitment to education we see in other nations and cultures.