The official line from the Lancaster Independent School District is as peppy and upbeat as a feel-good Broadway musical: Everything's great! It's all good! We're on a rocket-called-Achievement to a planet-named-Excellence, and nothin's gonna stand in our way, 'cause (big finale) it's all for the children!

Well, golly, how do you not like that message?

If you're not tapping your feet and singing along by now, you must be spiteful or cynical or just plain nuts. You must be against excellence!

Trying to follow the peculiar recent history of the Lancaster ISD – not, in some of its particulars, unlike the history of its now-defunct neighbor, the Wilmer-Hutchins ISD – is an odd and unsettling experience.

It's a journey to a parallel universe where every problem is a blessing in disguise, where there's no embarrassment that can't be pasted over with a shiny coat of happy talk, and where, if you don't have something nice to say, you should keep your big mouth shut.

At the center of all this is the district's enigmatic superintendent, Dr. Larry Lewis.

Dr. Lewis, the district's chief administrator for five years now, entered the arena as a promising and charismatic figure: He made headlines by insisting that students complete summer and holiday homework assignments or face suspension. He got out of his office and visited campuses, making himself familiar to students and subordinates who might not previously have known who the district superintendent was.

But his efforts to micromanage information and spin the facts are ultimately distressing.

In Dr. Lewis' publicly stated view, a 300-page Texas Education Agency audit that found discrepancies and inaccuracies in the district's financial statements is "validation" of its practices and "a great thing for our community to see that we're doing things right."

A failed proposal last year to abruptly shift the school year to a four-day academic week – with barely a month's notice to students, teachers and employees – was a grand scheme for "academic excellence," a conclusion based on "extensive research" that consisted of a week's worth of Googling.

The district has a peculiar policy that bans board members – Dr. Lewis' bosses – from speaking to the press. And his allies on the board have tried to enforce an edict that questions for staff members should be submitted in writing in advance of public meetings or workshops.

The state's appointment last week of a financial conservator to bird-dog the Lancaster school system's money procedures will "restore confidence" in the local administration, he sunnily predicts.

And now we learn that a longtime friend of Dr. Lewis hired to oversee LISD finances is fixing to go to jail for stealing from a previous employer. The administrator, Eugene Smith, resigned from the Lancaster district without explanation in February 2007. Dr. Lewis calls him "a friend who made a mistake."

Taken individually, any one of these characterizations might in fairness be viewed as an understandable effort to put the best light possible on a difficult situation.

But taken collectively, they have the effect of undermining the basic tenet of public accountability. When you put them all together, you come up with an ongoing disconnect between stated perception and reality in the way the Lancaster ISD conducts its business.

Well, this problem isn't exclusive to the Lancaster schools. Theirs isn't the first elected board to be disrupted by internecine politics, not the only governmental agency around that ever tried to stonewall its critics.

But for a long time now, Dr. Lewis has practiced intransigence and obfuscation as all-consuming expressions of performance art. When the answer to every question is an implicit "none of your business," there's a problem.

The school board – from which he lost long-held majority support as of the local elections in May – called last month for an inquiry into the superintendent's leadership by an outside attorney.

Dr. Lewis isn't commenting. Let's hope, for his sake and for the district, that the result is a validation that restores some confidence out there. They need it.

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