On Tuesday, April 12, the Bainbridge Island School Board will host a forum at the Bainbridge High School Commons to introduce four promising superintendent candidates to the community.

The plan is great in theory. In four separate sessions, we’ll hear from each candidate individually, have time to ask them questions and provide written feedback to the board.

The sessions are planned as follows:

5:30-6:20 p.m. – Steve Matthews

6:25-7:15 p.m. – Michael Tolley

7:20-8:10 p.m. – Peter Bang-Knudsen

8:15-9:05 p.m. ­– Molly Evans

While time may fly by for the applicants, for the public,3½ hours (with just four five-minute breaks) seems excruciating.

It’s supposed to ensure an equitable experience for all candidates, Board Vice President Sheila Jakubik wrote in a letter to district families.

But, really, we think the set-up just ensures a cranky and distracted crowd by the end of the evening.

Who has stamina for four 50-minute meet-the-applicant periods after an eight-hour-plus work day?

That said, we can see the reasoning behind cramming all the candidates into one meeting.

Breaking the candidates into two two-a-day sessions would have meant, well, two meetings for islanders to get a good look at the next person who’ll lead Bainbridge schools. And there was the concern, of course, that candidates who were the stars of the second meeting, if the district had arranged it that way, would have had more time to rest after a day of meeting with staff and others, plus extra time to prepare, before their Q&A time with the public.

Still, if the district expects us to bring our analytical A-games, it needs to adopt a more realistic understanding of attention spans.

As we’ve learned with the city council: Just because the meeting’s longer, doesn’t mean it’s more effective.