Apparently the Berkeley school board didn't know, and now they've halted the hiring process. I doubt Heatley will ultimately be approved.

There's got to be some context of screwy influential inner circle people hand-picking him.

Or a convoluted hiring process requiring the checking of many very specific boxes.

My guess is that the hiring committee (which may have been the board itself in closed session) hadn't read the memo, and that whatever questions they asked him about support of diversity in family structure got a sufficiently non-committal (or good-sounding) response to not raise any red flags. This sounds like they put off the majority of the due diligence until after announcing him as their candidate, as well as indicating some of the accomplishments that likely impressed them. I suspect that delaying the public due diligence is a more-or-less standard part of maintaining confidentiality for those candidates who are not selected.

Also, from his picture on that website, Dr. Heatley is African-American, and that community was significantly divided over Prop 8 in 2008, while still being heavily liberal/progressive overall. So it's quite possible that the rest of his political views would fit in just fine in Berkeley, rather than this memo being an indication of wingnuttery.

The first rule of sanity is to never discuss local politics in Berkeley. NEVER.

The last couple years I was in high school the principal seemed to be in an ongoing battle with the school board, which itself didn't seem stable.The principal didn't attend graduation my senior year and by then knew he wasn't coming back. Rumor had it that his kid Or kids attended school in an east bay suburb and he went to one of their graduations.

I never really understood what was going on as I was a high school kid and wasn't really interested. Also, what Halford said.

Ron Dellums is available to do the job on an interim basis.

I'd forgotten all about Ron Dellums.