Monroe County residents on Aug. 24 will be asked to decide whether the schools superintendent should be hired by the School Board rather than elected by the voters.

If voters approve the hiring of future superintendents, they'll be bucking the trend. Florida leads the nation in elected superintendents, with 42 elected and 25 appointed superintendents, the Florida Association of District School Superintendents states.

School Board Chairman Andy Griffiths said of the nation's school districts, 154 have elected superintendents and the rest -- about 15,000 districts -- hire their superintendents from qualified applicants.

"Florida is unique unto itself; that's 1 percent elected superintendents nationwide while more than two-thirds of Florida's superintendents are elected."

It's a proposition that's failed in Monroe County four times in the past three decades, with the most recent being the most resounding. In 1976, 62 percent of the voters turned it down; in 1992, 59 percent said no; in 1994, 53 percent nixed it; and in 2004, 69 percent rejected the idea.

The events of 2009 may have changed voters' minds, however, say School Board members, all of whom are in favor of the change.

The board had no recourse with former Superintendent Randy Acevedo, whose five-year tenure was marred by nepotism, corruption, mismanagement, policy violations and the alleged theft of school funds. The board could only lobby Gov. Charlie Crist to remove Acevedo, which did not happen until he was arrested on an official misconduct charge in June 2009, four months after the financial scandal began to unfurl.

"The fact that the School Board was powerless to try to stop some of the shenanigans going on in the school district, because the super was elected and did not respond to the board, we feel it's time to have a hired superintendent," School Board member John Dick said.

Politics still can affect a hired superintendent's longevity, said Superintendent Joe Burke, whom Crist appointed to replace Acevedo in August 2009. He had been a hired superintendent in Springfield, Mass.

"Depending upon what the board is looking at for its target and its goals, what they want from a superintendent, those get negotiated in the super's contract," Burke said. "School boards evaluate the superintendent's contract annually. Superintendents can adjust to philosophy changes, but sometimes they can't. It's hard to predict what issues will take on a political nature. That's the tough part."

The Florida School Board Association also acknowledges the pros and cons of hiring superintendents.

The pros are:

• The process draws highly qualified candidates for the job outside the county and state;

• Hired superintendents have to answer to the school boards that hire them; and

• Hired superintendents bring in new ideas and up-to-date education philosophies.

The cons are:

• It costs about $30,000 to hire a superintendent; elections are virtually free;

• It costs about $170,000 in severance to end a hired superintendent's contract prematurely; and

• Hired superintendents can be fired by School Boards that have their own political agendas.

According to Brooks White, who heads the Support Keys Schools Political Action Committee, he was among a group of people who urged the board to use the word "hired" instead of "appointed" in the referendum. The change, he said, is not about Acevedo or previous superintendents, but the drive to professionalize the county.

"This is about the evolution of the school district in this county," White said. "I've been here 30-something years, we're moving toward a more professional school district. When you talk about hiring the chief executive, as opposed to appointing him, it implies a process. You come up with a job description, requirements, a search committee, and it's all done in sunshine. That's very important."

The School Board voted 5-0 last summer to ask the Monroe County Commission to put the question on the Aug. 24 ballot. The County Commission, which approves countywide ballot language, agreed to the wording in March.

jguerra@keysnews.com