The Bell Curve:

The people who run our Newport-Mesa schools have been taking a lot of heat this school year — to which I contributed substantially.

The cycle started with what seemed to me an indifferent effort to make sure President Obama’s chat with students got before them in real time. That morphed into the Corona del Mar High School football players who explained publicly how they would like to rape and kill one of their classmates and — most recently — the temporary enforced paid vacation served by the faculty advisor for the student production of “Rent.”

All of these episodes drew mostly negative reaction from local citizens, sometimes almost as much for the way the criticisms were responded to as for the acts themselves. The result has been a double dose of frustration.

The populace wasn’t getting answers to its questions, and school officials — especially at the highest level and including board members — were required to give cliched answers, or none at all — to questions that they found legitimate and deserving of an answer.

And so the criticism grows with every new unanswered question until it reaches the office of Newport-Mesa Unified Supt. Jeffrey Hubbard. That’s where the buck stops.

And that’s why I was sitting in his office Monday to try and get some answers to pass along to the folks back home.

The results, as you will see if you read on, won’t stop any presses. But they might cast some dim light here and there.

Any conversation about the administrative performance of public school districts must start — I was told — with the 32-page California Public Records Act, in which one tiny entry known as Section 6254.13 reads, “Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to require disclosure of records that are any of the following: personnel, medical or similar files, the disclosure of which would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal property.”

That’s it. Even, apparently, if the personal property is a death threat.

“Our punishment in that situation was the most severe available to us,” Supt. Hubbard told me. “We would have loved to pursue it further, but our legal counsel said ‘No.’ Expelling the students who made those threats would have meant that the legal process has the burden of proof. That would have been much easier if it had been charged as a crime, but the police — after two investigations — declined to do that.”

I asked Hubbard why he didn’t use the power he had by at least refusing to allow these four students to graduate with a class that contained the young woman they had threatened.

He said: “They withdrew from school under a restraining order, but they completed their academic work so we couldn’t stop them from graduating.”

“What would you have done differently,” I asked, “ if the law permitted?”

His answer was quick and emphatic: “I would have expelled them immediately.”

The situation with Ron Martin, the drama teacher relieved of his duties briefly following the “Rent” flap, was quite different but still covered under the Public Records Act. Martin disclosed himself by going public with his side of his quarrel with the district. But, according to Hubbard, this still doesn’t free the district to make public the issues in dispute.

“We wanted Ron Martin in his classroom, with things going smoothly, doing what he does best,” Hubbard said. “When our investigation was completed, we asked Ron to make a few changes, and he’s back in school.

“These chapters are behind us now, so we can get on with education until the next one hits. That’s a built-in part of this job. Our goal when matters like these arise has always been to restore order as quickly as possible so the learning mechanism can function the way it should. And that means keeping pace with the new technology our young people grasp so quickly and we find hard to keep up with.”

The likelihood of a change in the Public Records Act that would allow more transparency in school matters is slim to zero. On the day I met with the superintendent, the U.S. Supreme Court came down with a ruling that would prevent the release of names of people who signed an anti-gay petition in Washington. The 6-1 ruling underscored a further tightening of the continuing debate over what is private and what is public in defining 1st Amendment rights.

“Until the courts sort this out our position in it — especially about expulsion — is ambiguous, and we are all frustrated when we can’t tell the real story,” Hubbard said.

As a finishing aside, there was a clear winner in the contest for public interest in these issues.

The Obama chat with students pulled some 350 e-mails to the school district, about evenly divided between support and rejection, but miles ahead in interest.

No ambiguity or transparency there.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.