Checks and imbalances

Laboy is the city's embattled school chief, who is currently embroiled in a bona fide scandal over snooping. More than 400 people were the subjects of background checks run by city employees on School Department equipment. They checked criminal, financial, and other personal information. Some who were spied on were opponents or adversaries of Mayor Michael Sullivan.

Some were people with no apparent connection to Lawrence, like David Ortiz. One was a former Globe reporter who covered Lawrence. Lawrence police have urged all affected to get updated credit reports and examine them closely.

If the list were confined to celebrities, one could dismiss it as a harmful but meaningless prank. But the presence of so many civic officials elevates it to an outright invasion of privacy, if not something more suspicious. At best, it raises the question of whether there is any responsible adult supervision in this school system.

Fortunately for Laboy, he and Sullivan are close allies. While some in the town are calling for Laboy's head - there was a march on City Hall scheduled for yesterday morning - Sullivan has blandly suggested that any disciplinary action is probably an overreaction.

It's hard to understand why a School Department would be running background checks on half the city. But a lot goes on in Laboy's department that would make a reasonable person scratch their heads.

Just a few weeks ago, a teacher was apparently fired for taking lasagna to her Italian students. She had, apparently, violated a rule against parties and was escorted out of the building. She was reinstated after the teachers union threw a fit, which included a vote of no confidence in the school's principal. The school department then claimed the teacher was never fired, exactly. Perhaps she just got a 9-day timeout.

This turmoil is far from welcome in a perpetually struggling school system where everyone's efforts would frankly be better devoted to teaching the students. Instead of education, Lawrence has been subject to a ham-fisted display of political ineptitude.

As the controversy over the background checks has widened, Laboy's special assistant, Mark Rivera, resigned earlier this week over his role in running the checks. This is standard coverup behavior: fire a fall guy and hope everyone moves on. The problem is, this dismissal doesn't answer any questions - and there are many.

To be fair, Laboy has won many fans during his time in office. Though the city's test scores remain below the state average, they have risen steadily. The former New York city administrator has also presided over the construction of a badly needed $110 million high school. Even critics say he has injected a needed dose of ambition to the system.

Few would be naïve enough to believe that the school department in a city like Lawrence would be immune to city politics. But it shouldn't be a glaring example of bad behavior, followed by silence. Police and prosecutors shouldn't need to investigate the local school superintendent. And when they do, both the superintendent and his boss, the mayor, have an obligation to come clean about what they know. It is stunning, frankly, that they think they can get away with going underground.

Laboy may be guilty of nothing more than presiding over a bunch of overly curious employees. But that's hard to figure, given that those checks appear to have been run by his own assistant.

In theory, a school committee would demand answers, though Lawrence's appears too timid to push the issue.

Thank goodness there are riled up people who seem in no mood to go away. They may end up teaching one truly valuable lesson: that even high-ranking officials can't get away with whatever they want.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.