The Panama Central School Board of Education has been meeting over the past week to discuss candidates to serve as the district’s interim superintendent after Aaron Wolfe resigned to take a position in Wellsville.

Wolfe had been in Panama since 2022 after the retirement of former Panama superintendent Bert Lictus. Once an interim superintendent is hired, we hope the district continues down a path it started with Lictus and looks to share the position with a neighboring school district.

Paama and Clymer were ahead of the curve when it came to sharing positions, including sharing Lictus as the districts’ superintendent for several years. The agreement came to an end after Lictus resigned as Clymer superintendent after a failed merger of the Clymer and Panama school districts in 2018. But, with the continued success of the Clymer/Sherman/Panama merged sports teams and continued sharing of positions between so many school districts, Wolfe’s resignation presents an opportunity to continue a worthy project that was set aside in the wake of a contentious merger. .

Between Clymer, Sherman and Panama we would hope the search for a new superintendent in Panama is a short one. Sharing positions was groundbreaking at the time Panama and Clymer chose to share superintendents. Now it’s becoming increasingly common. That’s a good thing. One way to keep limited resources on students is to share administrative positions like superintendents. Any money we can save on administration is money that is spent on instruction – or not taken from taxpayers in the first place. As our regional populations decline we have to keep our collective noses to the grindstone of administrative efficiency. In our view, that means Panama’s next superintendent should be a familiar face from one of its neighbors.