The South Kitsap School District bought itself a bit of controversy last week by rushing to anoint Dave La Rose as the successor to Bev Cheney when she steps down as superintendent next spring.

But although conspiracy theories abound to explain why the board acted with such unseemly haste, until the facts prove otherwise we’re going to stick with Occham’s Razor, which states that the simplest solution to any question is usually the correct one.

And in this case, the simplest answer is that the board opted to forego the usual requirement of spending $25,000 to $40,000 of the taxpayers’ money on an executive search firm that would scour the country for a qualified candidate when it had somoneone qualified right here all along.

Which isn’t to say we endorse La Rose, since we, like most everyone else in the community, know very little about him. But obviously the school board members — who voted unanimously (with one abstention) to hand the reins to La Rose — knew him and were satisfied he could handle the job.

And since they’re the ones who will have to face the voters and explain why the search process was abbreviated if the choice turns out to have been an ill-advised one, we’re inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

One thing we do know, however, is what we would have looked for in a school superintendent if we’d been asked, and that’s a no-nonsense administrator who takes what he or she is given and puts it to the very best use for the students.

Too often a school superintendent’s main responsibility is to be little more than the head cheerleader for bond measures that show up on the ballot seemingly every other year.

And while fundraising is a necessary evil, it’s also true that the taxpaying voters have a right to decide for themselves at what level they desire to support local schools without being second-guessed by someone suppposedly taking orders from them.

The superintendent, whose handsome salary is paid out of the public coffers, ought to be working full-time to make South Kitsap the best school district it can be with the resources he or she is given, not constantly complaining that there isn’t enough in the till.

If that means demanding more from the teachers, students and parents, so be it.

No one said the job was going to be easy. But if Dave La Rose gets the kind of results the residents of this district have a right to expect, it shouldn’t matter how many — or how few — other applicants he had to beat out for the job.