Mr. Hornsby's Exit

IT IS A SCANDAL that under the terms of his contract, Andre J. Hornsby, who resigned late Friday as superintendent of schools in Prince George's County, is apparently to receive $125,000 in severance pay, the equivalent of a half-year's salary. A more just, if unlikely, outcome would be for him somehow to compensate the school system, the second biggest in Maryland and one of the 20 largest in the nation. For Mr. Hornsby -- highhanded, confrontational, ethically insensitive -- has plunged the struggling schools into another period of tumult they can ill afford.

Hired scarcely two years ago, Mr. Hornsby took just 16 months to land himself in ethical hot water, much as he had in his previous job in New York state. He then proceeded to drag the 136,000-student school system through an additional seven months of turmoil, including further disclosures of ethical lapses, an FBI investigation and clashes with PTA groups, before, mercifully, he resigned without notice Friday evening -- late enough to ensure news coverage only after most people were distracted by their Memorial Day weekend plans.

From all appearances, Mr. Hornsby jumped before he was pushed, electing to leave office days before an outside auditor hired by the school board is scheduled to submit its findings about a $1 million contract, overseen by Mr. Hornsby, with an education software company that employed his girlfriend. That contract, for the purchase of software from California's LeapFrog SchoolHouse, is apparently the subject of an FBI investigation that featured a raid on Mr. Hornsby's office last month. It is one of several acts of poor judgment that Mr. Hornsby managed to squeeze into his truncated tenure.

Of course, part of the blame must be shared by the county school board, which hired Mr. Hornsby despite ample signs of potential trouble. He had been fired as schools superintendent in Yonkers, N.Y., where he clashed with the school board, the mayor and the unions and was condemned by the city's inspector general for ethical improprieties related to contracts. But county school board members hired him and then stuck with him despite his missteps, largely because Mr. Hornsby seemed to be having some success raising Prince George's schools' abysmal performance on standardized tests, albeit based on one set of results just a year after he'd been hired. He claimed credit for the success through what he characterized as a back-to-basics revolution -- an insistence on greater rigor at all levels, more intensive testing, and a newly demanding curriculum focusing on reading and math. We hope that success, if genuine, is sustained.

The challenge now is how the school board, whose own life expectancy is limited, will seek a new superintendent. The board, an appointed body that is likely to be replaced next year by an elected one, would find it tough enough under normal circumstances to fill the job of running a huge, chronically troubled school system; it will be harder yet given the uncertainty implied by the coming turnover in schools governance. By waiting this long to depart, Mr. Hornsby has made it nearly impossible to find a permanent replacement in time for the start of school in the fall. Better at this point, perhaps, for the current school board, having muffed one choice, to settle for an interim chief and leave the selection of a permanent superintendent for its successor.