It hasn't been a good year for the Rochester School District. Test scores and graduation rates are low. Mayor Bob Duffy has been critical of student performance and of the district's budget. The district lost its superintendent when Manny Rivera accepted a position with the Spitzer administration.

And now, as the School Board looks for someone to take Rivera's place, some board members want to weaken the superintendent's authority and strengthen the board's. They want to overturn a state law that lets the superintendent hire and fire the district's senior management staff - known as the Superintendent's Employee Group - without board approval.

The 10-year-old law, introduced by Assemblymember David Gantt and Senator James Alesi, was intended to give Rochester's superintendent more latitude in management staffing decisions. The idea was to give the superintendent authority similar to that of a private-sector CEO, without board interference.

At the time, some School Board members fought the law, saying it weakened their authority. But the law was a mild version of what some district critics had hoped for. Former Rochester Mayor Bill Johnson, for example, had pressed for a bill giving the superintendent authority over all staffing decisions. Under the Gantt-Alesi legislation, the School Board continues to approve hirings, firings, and promotions of hundreds of district employees, including teachers and principals.

The board's power is again at the center of tension, and board members are divided on the issue. Board members Tom Brennan and Willa Powell want the Gantt-Alesi law repealed so that the School Board can approve the superintendent's senior staffing decisions. President Domingo Garcia, Vice President Malik Evans, and board member Van White say the Gantt-Alesi law works well. Shirley Thompson and Cynthia Elliott seem on the fence; both express concerns with the law, but say they aren't in favor of changing it.

So far, the most vocal critic of the current system is Tom Brennan, who says he is concerned because Superintendent Bill Cala plans to make some senior management changes in the central administration. Cala shouldn't make any structural changes, says Brennan. Those decisions should be left to the new superintendent in consultation with the board, he says.

Brennan also complains that the Superintendent's Employee Group has become too large. What was supposed to be a handful of senior administrators, he charges, has become a staff of nearly 50 people with a payroll that exceeds several million dollars.

"The Gantt-Alesi law should be repealed," says Brennan. "It was the start of a decade-long political attack on board oversight. The Superintendent's Employee Group has become bloated and arrogant. I often think it exists for no other reason than to keep information from the board and obstruct implementation of policy."

Working with the superintendent's staff is like working with a bureaucracy inside another bureaucracy, Brennan insists. His experience trying to create a new policy - making it easier for students with low grades to participate in sports - convinced him that the board needed more authority over the administration, he says. The policy was initially met with resistance by Rivera. After months of discussion, it was finally approved. But it was a slow process, Brennan says, because some central-office staff "obstructed" the flow of information.

"That experience was a real eye-opener," he says.

"There's no question that the Gantt-Alesi law was intended to weaken the power of the School Board," says board member Willa Powell. Powell and Brennan say Cala is within his right to make any changes he wants to make, but they want him to talk to them before making them.

And the board is not powerless, says Powell. The School Board approves the job titles and funds the positions in the Superintendent's Employee Group. But, she says, eliminating positions hasn't been easy. The Superintendent's Employee Group seems to provide cover for employees who should have been terminated.

"If you have a superintendent that wants to take the path of least resistance, reassignment of problem employees into this group makes them almost untouchable. And that's what has created bloat," says Powell. "I can't think of anybody that was ever let go under Janey or Rivera. The group just kept growing."

As Powell says, the law was indeed designed to weaken the board's power. Its supporters say that the superintendent should be held accountable for the actions of the administrators and staff under him. Board members, those supporters say, shouldn't be involved in day-to-day operations. They are part-time public servants who don't have the time or the expertise to oversee district employees.

"What corporation do you know that allows its board of directors to hire and fire staff?" says Assemblymember David Gantt. "Name me one. You can't, because it is just not done. The School Board is there to legislate, to set policy - for governance. The accountability should be with the superintendent."

The School Board should function more like a business, says its current president, Domingo Garcia. "I think the board has more than sufficient oversight, and the Gantt-Alesi law is doing exactly what it was supposed to do,' he says. "We give the superintendent a job to do and the leeway to do it. True, there have been some excessive salaries and some people who were not doing well, and maybe should have been let go."

There has been criticism in the past that board members used their authority for patronage, getting jobs for friends and supporters.

"The board is the authorizing body," says former superintendent Manny Rivera. "But you really need to give the superintendent the full authority to make hiring and firing decisions. Back in 1991 through 1993, there were certain board members who were active in trying to make personnel changes."

"There have also been board members who have stepped into an area where they have no responsibility," Garcia says. "The board's job is to hire the superintendent. If we don't trust the superintendent to do the job, then we fire the superintendent. Anything other than that, I would consider meddling."

Drawing a clean line on the School Board's responsibility isn't always easy, however. Sometimes employees appeal to board members when they're not happy. Board member Cynthia Elliott says district employees, including some in the administrative office, have approached her about personnel issues. She says she has been troubled by them and has expressed those concerns to the superintendent. But, she says, she doesn't want to cross the line.

"I have to think of what is in the best interest of the district," she says. "But I don't want to micro-manage. I want the superintendent to report to the board. But if the superintendent isn't handling the set of objectives we've given him, then we - the board - have to discuss that. He reports to us."

As for Brennan's charge of a "bloated" Superintendent's Employee Group: the law doesn't state how many people the superintendent can appoint to key positions. And it acknowledges that senior managers may have a support team of their own.

It's not how many employees there are in the Superintendent's Group that matters, says Rivera.

"What's important is having the right people in the right positions," he says. "We were always trying to improve, but that said, I think the staffing was appropriate."

The discussion about the School Board and its role comes as the board narrows the field of candidates for a new superintendent. While theoretically, the issue could cause trouble in the search, it isn't likely to. The reason: there's not much chance the Gantt-Alesi law will change anytime soon.

Even if Brennan gets a majority of the School Board behind him, the State Legislature would have to agree to overturn the law. The dean of the local Assembly delegation is one of the bill's authors, David Gantt. And Gantt isn't likely to change his mind.

Meantime, disagreement between some board members and Cala may heat up as Cala begins making his personnel changes.