Dancing Out of the Courthouse

Walk of shame outside the courthouse

The county where I grew up, was educated, and still live, took a chance a few years ago, hiring a school superintendent, S. Dallas Dance, who was 32, with no experience being a school superintendent in a such a large district as ours.

He had hopped from administrative jobs in Richmond, Henrico County, Va., and Houston - two years at each stop on the ladder to the top, after working for hardly any time as a high school English teacher, and principal of a small-town middle school.

When he was hired here from Houston, he didn't even have enough years of teaching to  qualify to be a Maryland school superintendent.  There is a law on the books to that effect, and the Baltimore County school board, so in awe of the talent of this young man, had to go with hat in hand to the State to get a waiver to hire him.  

Guess how it worked out.

Dance worked here for 5 years, having signed a new contract after 4, and took off hurriedly last spring, using the time-honored excuse of wanting to spend more time with his family.

And soon, he will probably have a new family to spend months or years with.

Now, Dance's time here was not without success.  He was around when graduation rates improved, and laptops were distributed to all students, and elementary school students started learning Spanish. 30,000 people delighted to his Tweeted mottoes, slogan and aphorisms.

The funny thing is that the credit for most of the accomplishments occurring during his time probably is rightfully placed on the desks of his hard-working staff.  Because, you see, Dr Dance was rarely in the kitchen when all those pies were being baked, as it were. 

You see, while teachers were in classrooms back here in Baltimore County trying to figure out how to teach a Common Core curriculum, the design of which he farmed out to an outside agency which fell down on the job, Dance was not here at his office all that often. Instead, he darted from technology conferences to "education leadership groups"...so much so that in 2016, he was gone more than a third of the days when school was open, happily parading through 19 cities in 13 states at taxpayer expense.  

And you ask, "Why?"

Well, it turns out that while he was making $287,000 to be running the place, he was pocketing $90,000 on his side hustle with a consulting company that he fixed up with a no-bid county contract. Evidence shows that Dance asked an official with that firm to keep it a secret that Dance was on their payroll, saying he “might as well kill himself” if people found out.

People found that out, and a lot more. Dance was indicted in January, and pleaded guilty yesterday to four counts of perjury for concealing payments (totalling $150,000) he earned from consulting jobs while he was supposed to be serving as superintendent. Dance admitted that even though he was under oath when he filed forms claiming no outside income and no interest in any private companies, he lied. And while he was owning up to lies, he admits now that claiming that a consulting firm called Deliberate Excellence Consulting was owned by his father was another big whopper. It was his and his alone. 

The Baltimore Sun says prosecutors asked for Dance to serve five years in prison, but will settle for him doing 18 months when he is sentenced on April 20... his 38th birthday. 

I'm not saying that a person of 32 is not qualified to do a big job. And certainly Dance realized, as he walked into the Baltimore County Courts Building, that right across the Patriot Plaza is the Old Courthouse, where a man named Spiro Agnew, then county executive and future vice president, sat and took bags of payoff cash from paving contractors.

Agnew was in his 50s at the time. No, it's not the age, but, rather, the rectitude of the person that counts. And the good thing is that Dance will still be around 40 when he's sprung, with plenty of time to go somewhere and do something honest with all his gifts and qualities.