Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Marcellus’ oft-misquoted line from William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” fits perfectly the situation at Santa Ynez Valley Union High School in California’s — make that America’s — most Danish city. For, surely, something there is that stinks yonder, and the stench seems to be coming from the school board.

Actually, the valley has seen two school boards act up lately, one in Solvang and the other in Buellton. But the Buellton board, girded as it was to rid itself of a bothersome but popular music teacher who also happened to be the lead negotiator in teacher contract negotiations that have been stalled for months, had sense enough, after playing fast and loose with the requirements of California’s Brown Act open meetings law, to take note of the outpouring of public support for Ron Zell and back down.

Something else is afoot at the high school.

 

A crisis has developed there, in part, because of the zone of silence that seems to surround all of the officials involved. It was precipitated by the sudden and unexplained sacking of the school’s popular and respected principal, Norm Clevenger, by the retiring superintendent, Fred Van Leuven.

The barest hint of what grounds there might be to place Clevenger on administrative leave and strip him of access to his own computer files and, for that matter, the school, was a complaint in a letter he received from Van Leuven, the essence of which was that he had been so bold as to speak about school business with a member of the school board.

That’s not exactly a crime, in our view. In fact, it is a fairly normal way for high school principals, Clevenger and others, to do business. After all, the school board is charged with overseeing the operation of the high school and what better way for them to know what’s going on there than to hear from the principal — unless the superintendent thinks there’s something he needs to hide from them.

That’s not what we think is going on, however.

 

The waters are somewhat murky, but we think a deal was struck that really does smell bad, and the complaint against Clevenger, whatever it was, was necessitated by the simple fact that he was in the way. Matters became as bad as they did, we think, primarily because Van Leuven and his friends on the board are just plain clumsy. What they could have done easily and painlessly with the merest hint of finesse, they rushed through, instead, with a ham-fisted tactic that enraged the community and cost them whatever public support they might have had. Indeed, the very community they are supposed to serve has begun the process of recalling all five members of the school board; it can only be a profound embarrassment to be upbraided thus, something akin to Hester Prynne being forced to wear a bright red “A” for being unwed with child in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.” Well, they appear to have earned it.

As we understand it — remember, nobody’s willing to talk about this on the record — Van Leuven’s replacement, a guy named Paul Turnbull, agreed to become the high school district’s superintendent with the stipulation that he is free to name the school’s principal. That stipulation, we gather, is a kind of verbal codicil to his formal contract. It’s also a bit over the edge with respect to the standards for hiring people to work in the school district. Those standards call for open application procedures, committee reviews of applicants and a selection after a fair and impartial review. It’s called equal opportunity.

His choice, we have been told, is Mark Swanitz, the principal at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta.

Coincidentally, Jerry Swanitz, assistant principal at Santa Ynez High, was moved up to be interim principal when Clevenger was placed on leave Feb. 14. We think he’s Mark Swanitz’s father.

 

Surely this will not be taken as good news by the applicants who have thrown their hats in the ring to fill Clevenger’s shoes in a truncated application process that could be tainted by the possibility of a predetermined outcome, one that seemingly sets aside fairness and community goodwill to close a deal with the guy hand-picked by Van Leuven as his own replacement.

Does this kind of hanky-panky really happen? Could what we’ve been told really be true?

We can’t be sure, although we’ll keep digging until we are sure and we’ll tell the public whatever we find out. But it certainly raises our eyebrow, especially in light of the strange quiescence by all five board members when Van Leuven went to them with a frivolous complaint and they all agreed, for reasons they won’t state publicly, to Van Leuven’s action sweeping Clevenger out of office. We’ve previously described the board’s docility as obsequiousness, and we stand by that. They’ve bent their knee in unison to the will of a man who is leaving in a couple of months and who has, unlike the board and the community, nothing to lose in all of this.

 

The board members’ collective willingness to do this is a puzzlement; but rest assured, when the dust settles, we’ll all know what’s behind it. And that clarity will come in time to inform school district voters before they go to the polls to cast their ballots on the recall question.

 

That’ll be 2 cents, please.