Complaints about how the Florida Department of Education is being ran has led to call for an elected rather than appointed education commissioner.

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. — Maya Angelou

 A coalition of disgruntled Floridians doesn’t like how the state Board of Education is running things these days.

So they want to change it.

The burgeoning bipartisan group is calling for a return to an elected commissioner with Cabinet-level power.

Since 2003, a state board appointed by the governor has appointed the commissioner.

Before, the state had an elected education commissioner who sat in the Cabinet for more than 100 years.

Critics now believe the system is broken and want to change it. Many don’t like that current Commissioner Pam Stewart have done little to alleviate complaints and concerns about hot-button issues like Common Core and standardized testing.

They argue that the process makes the person overseeing the public schools two steps removed from parents, students and other interested parties who want to have a say in the education system.

It’s an issue that has come up before — by Democrats when Commissioner Tony Bennett resigned during a scandal in 2013. Republicans supported an elected commissioner when Commissioner Gerard Robinson left under pressure a year earlier.

There is a groundswell of supporters who think an elected commissioner would make him or her more accountable to the people, the voters.

To become law, 60 percent of each chamber in the legislature would have to agree to put the referendum before voters. It would then take 60 percent of voters to approve it.

Sen. Bill Montford, a Tallahassee Democrat, told the Tampa Bay Times that he traveled around the state as Leon County school superintendent, endorsing the move to an appointed commissioner ahead of the 1998 vote to amend the Florida Constitution.

“Politics has no place in education, or it should not,” Montford said. “The best way to do that was to not have an elected commissioner of education, but to have and appointed one.” The goal then, he said, was to get an appointed professional educator able to dedicate their full time t public education in Florida.

That sounds so eerily familiar to the rising debate in corners of the state over an elected vs. appointed school superintendent.

Besides Alabama and Mississippi, Florida is the only other U.S, state that elects superintendents.

Forty-one of Florida’s 67 superintendents are elected. In Mississippi, the majority of the state’s nearly 150 superintendents, and 37 of Alabama’s 136 superintendents, are chosen by voters.

Nationwide, there are about 14,500 school districts. In 99 percent of those districts, the local school board hires the superintendent. In Florida, school districts with appointed superintendents educate 2.2 million of the state’s 2.7 million students.

Education reformers believe Florida schools would be better served with an appointed leader.

As an elected official, the superintendent is beholden to voters, not the board. Board members didn’t hire him, so they certainly can’t fire him.

In Escambia County voters during the past 50 years have consistently rejected a move to appoint superintendents.

That makes our school system an anachronism.

It’s frightening to consider who could end up in charge of more than 7,000 employees, 40,000 students and a $617 million budget, a district the size and scope of some Fortune 500 companies. Shouldn’t’ we have a seasoned professional CEO-type running it?

The only state requirements to be an elected superintendent is that the candidate be 18 years old and a registered voter in the county.

That means a kindergarten teacher with no business acumen or leadership skills could become superintendent if she — or he — garnered enough votes. Or even a high school dropout can run for the office.

Of course, an appointed superintendent is no panacea. Having one won’t necessarily create harmony in place of acrimony. An appointed superintendent can’t magically increase graduation rates, school scores or teacher salaries.

Job security for an appointed superintendent can be a tad tenuous because school board members hold the power to dismiss him or her with a majority vote at their whim.

But there must be something right about hiring a school leader.

An overwhelming 99 percent of 14,500 school districts across the country hire superintendents, much like 100 percent of companies, colleges and sports teams. Congress, of course, elects leaders, and look at what that has left us with.

Go figure.

Even though voters have consistently rejected the idea, in theory and practice appointing a superintendent makes sense.

For one thing, it opens the door for a wide range of people with experience and expertise in running a large, complex organization.

As it is, only county residents can run in county elections, so the pool of candidates is limited.

Imagine the options for the School District if it held a nationwide search for a superintendent. It could open the door for a person with outstanding professional skills and exemplary educational training.

Another and no less important reason to have an appointed superintendent is to remove politics from the process.

Education, at its best, should remain nonpartisan. But candidates now run for the office as Republicans and Democrats, and in this heavily conservative part of Florida, the Republican candidate who wins the primary is virtually guaranteed to become superintendent.

More, appointed superintendents don’t have spent time or a dime campaigning for the next election, which frees them to concentrate fully on school matters.

Mississippi’s legislature once again is expected to take up the issue of elected superintendents in its next session.

In Alabama, the DeKalb County School Board is the latest in the state to push for an appointed rather than elected superintendent.

As Florida citizens debates over an elected vs. appointed education commissioner, they need to think about how school superintendents are selected, too.