Dallas Dance, the second-year superintendent of Baltimore County Public Schools, the nation’s 26th largest school district, has come under fire in recent weeks because he was moonlighting for a Chicago-based organization that provides professional development to educators who want to become school administrators, the Baltimore Sun reports.
What superintendents do on their own time, of course, is not the business of the public or their employer, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their work as superintendent. And furthermore, providing administrators with professional development would seem to give superintendents insight into their own jobs. Before coming to Maryland, Dr Dance received training from the SUPES Academy, which is the organization that paid him a nominal fee for consulting with Chicago-area administrators once a month. Why shouldn’t he do for others what the organization did for him, right?
Right, except for a few issues. One, he didn’t tell the board of education in Baltimore County that he was otherwise engaged with an organization that had a contract with the Baltimore County schools. That’s at least an appearance of impropriety. And two, he didn’t tell the board of education about the moonlighting in a timely manner, as is required in his contract. He thought it was only necessary to report such outside engagements once a year, but the board said he should have told them about it sooner.
“While I stand unequivocally behind the fact that nothing is being done wrong, after re-evaluation I do believe it is in the Baltimore County Public Schools’ best interest for me to not continue in any capacity with the SUPES Academy,” he told the board in an email message. He is now available to give his full professional attention to the schools in Baltimore County.
Some commentators have argued that the school system is not in a very good place right now, with a grievance from the teachers’ union about being overworked and over-stressed, changes to the way certain subjects are taught, new tests coming up this spring, a change in the schedule at many high schools, and just a range of other adjustments school district employees are making in a short time.
That may be the case, but Dr Dance’s time is still his own when he’s not on the clock. The appearance of impropriety is something to worry about. Poor communication between a superintendent and a board of education—or the public—is something to worry about. But moonlighting for an organization that trains people how to be better administrators and provide a higher quality education for all our children is much easier to justify.
