Never has a group struggled so mightily to make such an obvious choice.
This was no time to bring in an outsider to navigate the steep learning curve that can be Richmond's educational, political and -- perhaps most challenging of all -- community culture. With a flat-lining economy and a School Board with five new members, the Richmond school district needed a stabilizing force.
That's Yvonne W. Brandon, who as interim superintendent presided over a seamless transition after the departure last summer of Deborah Jewell-Sherman.
"Great news, good choice," said Frank E. Barham, executive director of the Virginia School Boards Association.
Brandon, he noted, worked her way up the district's ranks. "She's knowledgeable, hard-working and she knows the system. She'll rev it up, actually."
If Brandon was a clear choice, the process that led to her selection was opaque. We still know nothing of the other candidates. After hiring a national firm to assist, the School Board and a citizen search committee pushed the search right up to Tuesday's state-mandated deadline.
Somehow, perhaps by default, it appears they got it right.
You'd have to wonder why Brandon or anyone would want this job, beyond the $170,000 salary. Relatively affluent Chesterfield County is looking at the possible loss of 525 school jobs as school districts statewide struggle with state budget cuts.
Richmond has to weather the economic downturn with a student body that's more impoverished, hungry and academically challenged than its neighbors'.
The district needs an innovator, not a caretaker, and Barham says Brandon will bring continuity without complacency.
"She knows what needs to be done, what needs to be challenged, what needs to be tweaked," Barham said, adding that Brandon won't be "the same-old same-old."
Brandon grew up in Birmingham, Ala., a city defined by racial strife, in a community that produced Condoleezza Rice and Angela Davis. Brandon knew some of the girls who were killed during the Sept. 15, 1963, bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Shaped by Dynamite Hill in Birmingham and Randolph-Macon College, Brandon's association with Richmond's schools dates to 1977.
The economy is unwelcoming. But Richmond's political climate is much warmer for Brandon than it was for Jewell-Sherman, who was evicted from City Hall by then-Mayor L. Douglas Wilder. Mayor Dwight C. Jones doesn't sound like a man searching Google for moving vans.
"She is an excellent educator," Jones said Tuesday. "The days before us are grander than the days behind us."
Among Brandon's biggest challenges is to restore confidence in the district's fiscal integrity. That job becomes more crucial in this economy.
"I really believe humility comes before honor," she said in July upon being named interim superintendent.
Her office has humbled many of its occupants. Honor would be grand.
Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.
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