The Auburn School Board made the right choice Monday in deciding to let the law and its community, not the school district’s consultant, guide the search for a new school superintendent

The board dropped a plan to meet behind closed doors with a group of community members appointed to assist the board in evaluating superintendent candidates. While the board’s intent – to get broader input on an important decision – was commendable, its proposed execution was fundamentally flawed.

The search firm hired by the district suggested creating the so-called stakeholders group and assigning it this extraordinary privilege. The plan was to recruit 12 community members to attend the board’s closed-door interviews with semifinalists next week.

But as parent Daniel May argued, the district cannot include some citizens and exclude the rest. Besides giving the appearance of a board playing favorites, the practice would have violated the state’s open meetings law, at least in spirit.

Governing bodies can meet in executive session to talk about hiring, but that exception is built on the premise that public knowledge could harm the public interest. An executive session that includes select members of the community is really no executive session at all. It’s a quasi-public meeting, the likes of which state law doesn’t allow.

Search consultant Dennis Ray says he’s used the technique in a lot of school districts without trouble. That’s not so much proof of its legality as it is evidence that school boards and their attorneys need to be reminded about the law.

It doesn’t help that the attorney general’s manual on open meetings is less than clear on the question. It says a governing body can invite others to attend an executive session if they have “some relationship” to the matter being discussed.

Assistant attorney general Tim Ford, the state’s ombudsman for open government, objected to Auburn’s original plan. He agrees, however, that his office needs to develop better model rules.

Give the Auburn School Board credit for reaffirming its commitment to transparency in a meaningful way: The board is throwing the selection process open to the public sooner than many school districts do. The board decided to do as the Tacoma School District recently did and invite the public to come meet the six semifinalists expected to visit next week.

In this, good sense and respect for open government prevailed.